Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.]

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL WAR EFFORT.

WORK DIRECTION.

Mr. Hannah: asked the Minister of Labour, whether he is aware that a girl living at Wightwick, Wolverhampton, has been sent to work at Barnack, while a Peterborough girl is doing exactly the same work at Wolverhampton; and will he arrange for these ladies to change jobs, thus letting each live close to her home?

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Bevin): Inquiries have been made, but it has not been possible to trace the cases to which my hon. Friend refers. If my hon. Friend will provide me with additional information which will enable me to identify the persons concerned, I will institute further inquiries.

Mr. Hannah: It will give me great pleasure to do so. Do the Government realise how much dissatisfaction there is about this whole matter?

Mr. Sloan: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that Thomas Rodger, 22, Burnbrae, Twechar, was directed from Corby to resume work as a miner at Eastshore Colliery; that he had to vacate his company-owned house at Corby; that he was promised a house from the colliery company with whom he is now employed, but was refused it after his furnishings were on the way; that his wife and five children are now accommodated in the poor house; and whether he will take steps to overcome this and similar difficulties?

Mr. Bevin: I am having inquiries made and will communicate with my hon. Friend.

PRODUCTION INQUIRY COMMITTEES.

Mr. Lipson: asked the Minister of Labour, in how many factories production inquiry committees have already been set up?

Mr. Bevin: I regret I have no statistics available as to the number of production inquiry committees which have been set up. As I have previously informed the House, the establishment of committees for the purpose of joint consultation between management and workers is a matter of voluntary arrangement between the parties, and I am glad to know—although I do not receive actual figures—that the number of such voluntary arrangements is steadily increasing.

Mr. Lipson: Will my right hon. Friend obtain reports from time to time about how these committees are functioning and to what extent production is affected by them?

Mr. Bevin: I must have notice of that question.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES (WOMEN EMPLOYEES).

Sir John Mellor: asked the Minister of Labour whether he will give an assurance that women, trained by local authorities to take the place of men called up for service in the Forces, will not similarly be called up while in local government service?

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir. In agreement with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, I have decided that the question of the withdrawal of women in the service of local authorities shall be determined by the nature of the work upon which they are employed. In considering, however, the rate at which such withdrawals shall be effected, regard will be had to the extent to which replacements of men by women have taken place.

Sir J. Mellor: In view of the large amount of essential war work that has been delegated to local authorities, will my right hon. Friend agree that the local authorities in the matter of staff should receive as favourable treatment as the Civil Service?

Mr. Bevin: I cannot settle it on any precise basis. The method which has been employed is, in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, who is in constant touch with the local authorities, to deal with each case on its merits. Local authorities differ considerably according to population and area, on the amount of work that has to be performed.

Sir J. Mellor: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the representative associations of local authorities are very anxious about this matter?

Mr. Bevin: I understand that everybody is anxious about the matter.

WORKS DOCTORS.

Mr. Messer: asked the Minister of Labour how many doctors have been appointed into industry under the Factories (Medical and Welfare) Order, 1940; what method of appointment is there to ensure the appointment of the most suitable candidates; and whether there is any co-ordination of this type of industrial medical work?

Mr. Bevin: Since the making of this Order the numbers of whole-time and part-time works doctors have increased by about 100 and 400 respectively and it has not so far been necessary to exercise the powers given by the Order to give directions for such appointments to be made. It is for the employer to select the doctor but the arrangements have to be such as to satisfy the inspector, of factories and while in a very few cases the appointment has proved unsatisfactory and the doctor has been relieved of his post, I am advised that generally speaking the doctors appointed are carrying out the work well and that no complaint from workmen's organisations regarding any of the appointments has reached the Senior Medical Inspector of Factories. There is substantial co-ordination of the work with outside health services, and the importance of this is stressed in Departmental advice and otherwise.

Oral Answers to Questions — MILITARY SERVICE (BEVERIDGE COMMITTEE'S REPORT).

Mr. Graham White: asked the Minister of Labour when it is proposed to issue the report of the Committee on the employment of skilled men in the Fighting Services?

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Minister of Labour when the full report of the Beveridge Committee on the use of skilled men in the Forces is to be published?

Mr. Lawson: asked the Minister of Labour whether he has now considered

the Beveridge Report on the use of manpower in the Army; and whether he is now in a position to make a statement on the matter?

Mr. Bevin: The report, together with a memorandum from the War Office, will be published at an early date and, I hope, before the end of next week.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING CENTRES.

Mr. Graham White: asked the Secretary of State for India whether there is still a demand for technical instructors in industrial training centres in India; and whether he will investigate the possible availability and suitability of some of the instructors to be set free by the concentration of Government training centres in this country, for this service in India?

The Secretary of State for India (Mr. Amery): I am awaiting information from the Government of India, of whom I have inquired as to the present position of the matter covered by the fist part of the Question; in the meantime I can give an assurance that my right honourable Friend the Minister of Labour and I are in the closest touch to secure that India's needs in skilled personnel are supplied to the fullest extent compatible with the urgent demands upon such personnel in this country.

SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH.

Professor A. V. Hill: asked the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware of the close and profitable collaboration in scientific research and technical development now existing between the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Dominions, in the common war effort; and whether steps have been taken to establish similar relations with the distinguished scientists, and the great scientific and technical resources of India?

Mr. Amery: Measures have been taken in India through the Board of Scientific and Industrial Research, which includes several distinguished Indian scientists, to co-ordinate research in India with reference to war-time requirements: and a system already exists for the interchange of the resulting information with the


appropriate technical authorities in this country and, through the Eastern Group Supply Council, with those of the Dominions in the Eastern Group. Certain further suggestions for developing this system of liaison are receiving consideration.

Professor Hill: Does my right hon. Friend realise how essential are personal contacts in collaboration of this kind, and will he approach the Government of India with a view to establishing such contacts here and in India?

Mr. Amery: Yes, Sir.

POLITICAL SITUATION.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that in a by-election for a seat made vacant by the appointment of Mr. Madhao Shrihari Aney to the Executive Council, the Congress candidate, Mr. Veer Wamanrao Jashi, won the seat by a substantial majority over both rival candidates; and whether, in view of this index of Indian criticism of the Government's policy respecting India, he will institute the necessary reforms forthwith?

Mr. Amery: I understand that in the by-election referred to the Congress candidate was elected. The other two candidates represented the Hindu Mahasabha and the Forward Bloc. I do not consider that His Majesty's Government's policy in respect of India is affected by this local expression of opinion.

Mr. Sorensen: Seeing that a non-Congress seat was captured by a Congress candidate, does not this indicate that Congress is receiving considerable and increasing support from the peoples of India?

Mr. Amery: No, Sir.

Captain McEwen: Is it not a fact that recently contested by-elections in this country show great support for the policy of this Government?

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL DEFENCE.

HUGO FRIEDBERGER.

Wing-Commander James: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the certificate of naturalisa-

tion of Hugo Friedberger, whose appeal against a conviction for a currency offence was dismissed by the London Sessions' Appeal Committee on 4th December, has now been revoked; and, if not, how soon this will be done?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): The procedure for the revocation of certificates of naturalisation is governed by the provisions of Section 7 of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, 1914, as amended by the Act of 1919, and I have decided that this case shall be referred for inquiry to the Committee appointed under the provisions of that Section.

Wing-Commander James: When will my right hon. Friend know what steps are being taken?

Mr. Morrison: The only step I can take is to refer the matter to the Committee. If my hon. and gallant Friend looks up the provisions of the law, he will realise that I cannot say when the Committee will finish their inquiry.

PROSECUTION, LUTON.

Mr. Cecil Wilson: asked the Home Secretary why Alfred Evans, of Luton, who is practically blind, was prosecuted for refusing to register for Civil Defence?

Mr. H. Morrison: My information is that this man is not blind, but his eyesight is defective. His proper course was to register in accordance with the requirement of the law, and it would then have been open to him to apply to a hardship tribunal for exemption from fire prevention duties on the ground of defective eyesight. He admitted that he was fully aware of his legal obligations and said he had a conscientious objection to complying with the law—which, as my hon. Friend knows, is designed to secure an equitable distribution of fire prevention duties.

Mr. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this man was, with 30 others, sent to France in 1916 and sentenced to death, at the same time that the right hon. Gentleman himself was a conscientious objector? Are other men, who are obviously incapable of doing fire-watching, being prosecuted?

Mr. Morrison: With regard to my hon. Friend's kindly personal allusion, I com-


plied with the law, and if I had not complied with the law, I should have expected to face the consequences. This matter was carefully considered when the Order was made, and while the Government thought it proper to provide in the law for conscientious objection to military service, we could not see our way to provide for conscientious objection to fire-prevention duties, which are eminently civilian in character.

DETAINEES.

Mr. Stokes: asked the Home Secretary why criminal proceedings were not instituted against Mr. Benjamin Greene, late justice of the peace, on account of three charges laid against him amounting, in effect, to treason, which formed the basis of the reason on which Mr. Greene was detained?

Mr. H. Morrison: Consideration was given to the question whether the case should be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions with a view to criminal proceedings, but there were reasons which rendered this course impracticable.

Mr. Stokes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that on 22nd January last year the Parliamentary Secretary stated that whenever there was evidence to support a criminal charge proceedings were taken in the courts? Was there any reason why that course was not followed in this case?

Mr. Morrison: There were reasons why it was not followed in this case, but it would not be in the public interest to state them.

Mr. Stokes: Was all the evidence against Greene made available to the Advisory Committee?

Mr. Morrison: Yes, Sir.

Sir Irving Albery: In view of the fact, which the right hon. Gentleman has just stated, that it was impracticable to bring these charges, how can he explain that statement when the charges have definitely been withdrawn?

Mr. Morrison: The question of whether a prosecution can properly be taken is considered in all these cases, and on balance it was decided that proceedings should not be taken. I cannot say any

more about the matter because it would not be in the public interest to go into details.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: asked the Home Secretary what arrangements are in force for the maintenance and support of the families of British subjects detained under Regulation 18B?

Mr. Morrison: Dependants of persons detained who are in need are eligible to receive assistance from the Assistance Board under the regulations for the prevention and relief of war-time distress.

Sir T. Moore: Does my right hon. Friend realise that great hardship is suffered by decent women and children who do not want to go through the unhappy procedure of applying for relief and have no responsibility whatever for the ill-doings of their husbands or relatives who are interned?

Mr. Morrison: That is one of the unfortunate incidents associated with all forms of detention or imprisonment, and I do not think His Majesty's Government could take the responsibility of providing compensation for the families of detained persons. As I have said, they have the same rights as all other citizens to take advantage of the arrangements for the relief of distress.

Mr. Stokes: asked the Home Secretary what steps he proposes to take to ensure that no persons are detained under Regulation 18B on false evidence, as in the case of Mr. Benjamin Greene?

Mr. Morrison: As I previously informed my hon. Friend, Mr. Greene was not detained on the evidence of a single person, and I cannot accept the implication suggested in his Question. When information reaches the Home Secretary which he believes to be reliable, he would be failing in his duty if he did not take appropriate action in the interest of national security and order detention if he is satisfied that it is necessary so to do. Any person so detained has a right to make objections to the Advisory Committee. It after their investigation the Advisory Committee find, as occurred in Mr. Greene's case, that any particular allegation is not substantiated, it does not follow either that such allegation was a malicious invention or that the original order of


detention was unjustified. All cases of persons detained under this Regulation are kept under review, and I need not assure the House that I have constantly in mind the need of taking the greatest care in the exercise of the onerous responsibility placed on the Home Secretary by this Regulation.

Mr. Stokes: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether it is not the fact that the evidence of the single witness against this man was admitted to be false by the man himself; and would not unfortunate detentions of this kind be avoided in the future if persons detained were told the names of the persons who give evidence when they are not members of the security police?

Mr. Morrison: I dare say that it would be convenient to a lot of people to be told everything about everybody, but it would not be expedient for the security of the country. I beg the House to realise that the administration of this Regulation is a matter of difficulty and delicacy, and we try to learn as we go along from any difficulties which arise. I cannot be put in the position of having to answer the same question a whole series of times when I have already assured the House that Mr. Greene might have been detained independently of these allegations.

Sir I. Albery: Arising out of the somewhat detailed statement which the right hon. Gentleman has just made, can he inform the House what means exist by which a person who has been wrongfully detained can show that to be the case?

Mr. Morrison: I cannot admit that Mr. Greene was wrongfully detained, and I would remind the House that he has not been unconditionally released.

Mr. Stokes: I beg to give notice that, in view of the completely unsatisfactory situation and the public indignation which has been aroused, I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

INTERNEES, CANADA.

Miss Eleanor Rathbone: asked the Home Secretary whether he is taking steps to make with the Canadian Government an arrangement similar to that already made with the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, whereby anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist civilian internees can be released and allowed to

remain within the Dominion for the duration of the war, provided that the Dominion Government considers the release desirable for useful employment or study, or on humanitarian grounds, and he sees no reason for advising against it on grounds of security?

Mr. H. Morrison: My hon. Friend's reference to an "arrangement" with the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia is, I think, liable to cause misapprehension. The Dominion Governments accepted responsibility for the custody of these internees on condition that they should not, if released, remain at liberty in the Dominion. Any relaxation of that condition is a matter entirely within the discretion of the Dominion Government. In the exercise of that discretion the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia has decided on measures which I announced last week. As regards Canada, I have already authorised the release of some 200 internees whom the Canadian Government were prepared to allow to be at large in Canada, and I should, of course, be willing to authorise the release of others against whom, as individuals, there is no security objection, if the Canadian Government were willing to allow them to be at large within the Dominion.

Miss Rathbone: While thanking my right hon. Friend for his Reply, may I ask whether, in view of the large number of internees whom it has been found impracticable for shipping reasons to bring back to this country, he will use his good offices with the Canadian Government to get them to consider instituting arrangements as liberal as those which the Australian Government have made?

Mr. Morrison: My hon. Friend pressed me to take that course in the case of Australia. It must be remembered that both Canada and Australia are self-governing Dominions and I think that my line with Australia was more successful than would have been the line suggested by my hon. Friend.

PART-TIME VOLUNTEERS.

Mr. Bower: asked the Home Secretary how many voluntary Civil Defence workers have, as a result of the compulsion applied to them, resigned in the County of Middlesex; and whether he can


state the procedure to be adopted should they be compulsorily enrolled?

Mr. H. Morrison: I am informed that, out of a total of about 34,000 part-time volunteers in the County of Middlesex, 750 persons have intimated their intention to resign. The procedure to be adopted as regards compulsory enrolment generally under Defence Regulation 29BA is under discussion with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service, but has not yet been finally determined.

Mr. Bower: Does my right hon. Friend consider that the position which these figures disclose is satisfactory, and does he anticipate that any compulsory enrolment will be necessary?

Mr. Morrison: I could not say, because it depends upon a number of factors in addition to the one to which my hon. Friend has called attention, but I am inclined to think that the resignation of 750 out of 34,000 shows a satisfactory position.

Sir Herbert Williams: asked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the opposition to the Defence Regulation under which elderly part-time Civil Defence volunteers will, after 5th February, be required to remain in the service for which they have enrolled, he will consider a modification of this order, so that it shall not apply to persons over the age of 60?

Mr. Morrison: I do not propose at the present time to modify the Orders to ex-dude from their operation persons over the age of 60 years who decide not to avail themselves of the opportunity to notify their resignation but to continue to give service service in Civil Defence. As was stated in my Reply on 22nd January to my hon. Friend the Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) the responsible Ministers will keep a watch over the arrangements for release. I have no doubt local authorities will consider sympathetically applications for release on grounds connected with age. A person whose request for release is refused by the local authority may appeal to the Regional Commissioner.

Sir H. Williams: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that in this case he is applying conscription to persons who have already given a good deal of voluntary service and applying no such compulsion to the others?

Mr. Morrison: I am not applying compulsion in the way suggested by the hon. Member. Thousands of persons took up part-time Civil Defence service. They are a very fine body of people, and I hope the hon. Member will not discourage the civic spirit which has animated them. If in any particular case it is claimed that a person is too old, it will be considered.

FIRE SERVICE.

Mr. Storey: asked the Home Secretary whether there is any limitation on the period of leave which may be granted to a married woman serving in the National Fire Service, so that she may be on leave at the same time as her husband is on leave from His Majesty's forces; and whether leave so granted is with full pay?

Mr. H. Morrison: The standard allowance of annual leave with pay in the National Fire Service is 14 days a year. Married women in the Na ional Fire Service whose husbands are serving in His Majesty's Forces or in the Merchant Navy will be expected, so far as possible, to arrange to take their annual leave so as to coincide with that of their husbands. I recognise, however, that annual leave may not suffice in all cases and I am considering how best such cases, with due regard to National Fire Service requirements, can be met sympathetically. Instructions are now being prepared, and I shall be happy to communicate their effect to my hon. Friend in due course. The same considerations apply to local authority Civil Defence General Services.

Mr. Storey: Is the Minister aware that in some areas this leave is limited to three days and that no pay is allowed for that period, and in view of the more generous treatment given to women members of His Majesty's Forces will the right hon. Gentleman consider giving similar facilities to women in the National Fire Service?

Mr. Morrison: If the hon. Gentleman will examine my reply, he will see that I have indicated a sympathetic attitude.

PIETRO MARIANO SALERNI.

Mr. Keeling (for Commander Bower): asked the Home Secretary why Pietro Mariano Salerni, an Italian sub-


ject and Fascist, is allowed to be at large and to visit factories which are making secret munitions of war?

Mr. H. Morrison: Careful consideration was given to all the facts and circumstances of this case, and the description of the man as a "Fascist" does not accord with my information. The information available to me shows that it is in the national interest to allow him to be at large and to carry on the employment on which he is engaged.

Mr. Keeling: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this man's financial past has attracted very unfavourable notice in the Press, and does he not think him a very queer enemy to select for freedom?

Mr. Morrison: I expect that we know all about this man, but I shall be glad to consider any information that my hon. Friend can send me.

Oral Answers to Questions — WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION.

Mr. Tinker: asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware of the hardships inflicted on injured workmen through the delay in getting before the medical referee under the Workmen's Compensation Act; and will he consider some method by which a workman is not deprived of payment of compensation when several weeks have elapsed since notice was given to him before he was examined by the referee?

Mr. H. Morrison: On receipt of a reference under the Act the medical referee is required by the Regulations to fix a date for the examination of the workman as early as practicable and in any case not later, except in unavoidable circumstances, than the seventh day after he receives the reference. I can trace no recent complaint as to delay on the part of medical referees, but if my hon. Friend will furnish me with particulars of actual cases in which there is said to have been undue delay, I shall be glad to look into them.

Mr. Tinker: There are several cases in the mining industry in Lancashire, and I shall be glad to give my right hon. Friend the information or to meet him to discuss the matter with him.

Oral Answers to Questions — GAMING PARTIES (GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS).

Mr. Thorne: asked the Home Secretary whether he can yet say what steps he proposes to take in order to check evasions of the law relating to gambling parties?

Mr. H. Morrison: In view of the difficulty under the existing law in dealing with gaming parties held in premises taken for one night only, and of the harm which is liable to be done, especially in time of war, by these methods of evading the law, it is proposed to strengthen the existing legal provisions by a Defence Regulation making gaming parties which are organised for gain unlawful, wherever they are held. I hope that, by these means, it will be possible to put an end to the scandal of a device by which those who make a profitable business out of providing facilities for gambling have hitherto evaded the law on the subject.

Mr. Thorne: Do I understand from that reply that the right hon. Gentleman intends to make an Order or to bring in some legislation? No doubt he is aware that the chief at Scotland Yard knows a good deal about this business, and I take it for granted has told him about it?

Mr. Morrison: I have, of course, kept in close touch with the Metropolitan Police. The action which I have announced will be taken under the Defence Regulations, and I hope the new powers will be adequate. I hope the House will share my determination that this kind of parasitical growth on the war effort shall be eliminated.

Mr. Lipson: When these offenders are of military age will my right hon. Friend draw the attention of the Minister of National Service to them?

Mr. Morrison: If necessary I will do so, but I understand that my right hon. Friend does keep observation on that point.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION.

MILK-IN-SCHOOLS SCHEME.

Miss Eleanor Rathbone: asked the President of the Board of Education whether he is aware that the recent Order restricting the milk allowance to children in schools to one-third of a pint daily,


except in the case of those receiving free milk, is being so interpreted as to prevent children ordered to have two-thirds of a pint by the doctor from receiving this quantity in school because their parents are paying for it; and whether he will give instructions to prevent children from being thus penalised because of their parents' willingness to pay?

The President of the Board of Education (Mr. Butler): I regret that the winter shortage of milk has made it necessary to confine the maximum allowance of two-thirds of a pint a day under the Milk-in-Schools Scheme to necessitous children who receive milk free of charge. The justification for this exception to the general allowance of one-third of a pint rests not on medical grounds but on the assumption that these children may not be receiving in full their priority supply of a half-pint a day at home. Additional allowances of milk on medical grounds are governed by the provisions of the Milk (Scheme of Supply) Order, 1941.

Miss Rathbone: Do we understand from that reply that if a child is allowed to have only one-third of a pint, it is assumed that the parent will be able to obtain the other one-third of a pint at home?

Mr. Butler: Children are entitled to the domestic milk ration, in addition to any milk they receive at school.

EVACUATED CHILDREN (STATISTICS).

Mr. Sorensen: asked the President of the Board of Education the number and percentage of children who have returned to London from reception and neutral areas; and when the report is likely to be published respecting the gains in height and weight of certain evacuated children compared with those not evacuated and with comparable pre-war age groups?

Mr. Butler: It is not possible to supply the information in the precise form asked by the hon. Member. On 6th December, 1940, when the school population of London reached its lowest point since evacuation began, the number of school children in London was approximately 84,800. On the 24th January, 1942, the corresponding number was about 166,900 representing an increase of 82,100. On that date, the estimated number of London

school children still in reception or neutral areas was a little over 200,000. As regards the last part of the Question, the result of the investigation will not be available until towards tae end of the year.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that these will be extremely valuable figures and that they should be available at the earliest possible date?

Mr. Butler: I certainly think this will be one of the most interesting commentaries on the evacuation experiment. I am sorry there is a little time to elapse before the full results of the investigation can be made known.

SERVICE MAN'S DAUGHTER, EAST SUSSEX.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: asked the President of the Board of Education what steps have been taken by the East Sussex education authority regarding the education of the daughter of a corporal of the Royal Air Force whose name has been sent him?

Mr. Butler: Under the arrangements provisionally adopted by the local education authority for applying their income scale in the case of serving soldiers, the child to whom my hon. Friend refers would be liable for full fees. I understand, however, that the authority are giving further consideration to the matter in the light of correspondence with my Department. I have already impressed upon the authority the urgency of the matter and I hope that a decision will be reached within the very near future.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: While thanking my right hon. Friend for the information, may I ask if he can say whether this educational authority has acted in the same way as other education authorities in the matter?

Mr. Butler: I cannot comment upon the action taken, but I can assure my hon. Friend that the difficulties of the case have been urged upon the local education authority.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC ASSISTANCE.

Mr. Daggar: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that public assistance committees, in assessing the need of a recipient of outdoor relief, have


to take into consideration the allowances made by members of His Majesty's Forces to their relatives and dependants, and that such allowances are ignored by the Assistance Board in their assessments; and whether he will take steps to remove this anomaly?

The Minister of Health (Mr. Ernest Brown): I am aware of the difference to which my hon. Friend refers. The Poor Law Acts do not empower public assistance authorities to disregard allotments of pay, and I have no power to vary the requirements of the Acts.

Mr. Daggar: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it is time that something in the nature of justice were meted out to our men in this connection? Can he not suggest to the appropriate authority that amendment of the existing Act of Parliament is necessary?

Mr. Brown: My attention has been called to one or two anomalies, and I shall have to consider them.

Mr. A. Bevan: Is there any good reason why the right hon. Gentleman should not ask the House to amend the law on this matter at a very early opportunity? We have plenty of time on some days, and there is no reason why we should delay.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH.

MEDICAL MAN-POWER.

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been called to the number of idle doctors in uniform and the shortage of medical men in civil life; and whether he will see that the Fighting Forces provide, where possible, some measure of interworking between their respective medical men so as to simplify and accelerate medical attention and liberate numbers of such medical men after a brief period of attachment to their units to enable them to familiarise themselves with their prospective duties, on the understanding that should any sudden emergency arise they will at once be recalled to their posts?

Mr. E. Brown: All practicable steps to secure the economical use of doctors in His Majesty's Forces and in civilian services, including the measures referred to in the Question, are being examined by the Medical Personnel (Priority) Com-

mittee under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions. The scope of this Committee and a summary of an interim report are set out in the replies which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle) on 19th June and 2nd October last. I understand that further co-operation between the medical branches of the three Services has already been secured in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee and of the earlier Committee presided over by Sir Arthur Robinson, thus reducing, without any loss of efficiency in the Services, the number of doctors that would otherwise have been required. A system of releasing doctors from the Services to civilian practice, where there are special reasons for this course, is already in operation.

Sir L. Lyle: Is there not a great danger to the civil population, and therefore to the war effort, if the present methods are persisted in, and will not the right hon. Gentleman make a representation to the War Office on the matter?

Mr. Brown: If my hon. Friend will look at the facts, he will see that this work is under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend, and a most powerful committee.

Dr. Edith Summerskill: In spite of the Minister's reassurance, is he aware that a number of doctors are doing clerical work who might be released for clinical work?

Mr. Brown: If the hon. Lady knows of cases, perhaps she will let me have the facts.

Mr. Buchanan: Whom have we to approach when we are aware of cases in which doctors have been refused by the Army authorities?

Mr. Brown: In the case of England and Wales perhaps the hon. Member had better let me know. In the case of Scotland, the Secretary of State.

Mr. De la Bère: Is it not necessary to separate the true from the false and the real from the unreal?

Mr. Messer: asked the Minister of Health whether he will take steps to ensure that, in the calling-up of doctors, the medical staffs employed at factories shall not be depleted to a level impairing efficiency?

Mr. E. Brown: The selection of doctors for recruitment to His Majesty's Forces is made by the Central Medical War Committee and its local committees, with due regard to civilian medical needs, and before proposing a factory medical officer for recruitment these Committees satisfy themselves that suitable arrangements can be made for carrying on his work.

Mr. Messer: Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that some factories are depleted entirely of their medical staffs and that in one case a factory employing 6,000 people has no medical officer?

Mr. Brown: I will consult with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, if the hon. Member will give me the details.

PROBATIONER NURSES, LONDON.

Sir Henry Morris-Jones: asked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been called to the deplorable conditions under which probationer nurses work at present in some of the London voluntary hospitals; and whether he will conduct an inquiry into the position?

Mr. E. Brown: No, Sir, I have not received any representations to this effect. I will inquire into any specific cases that my hon. Friend may bring to my notice.

Sir H. Morris-Jones: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that probationer nurses in voluntary hospitals in London complain of the inordinately long hours they have to work, of the quality and quantity of the food they are given and of other restrictions which place severe handicaps upon them?

Mr. Brown: Perhaps my hon. Friend will give me some hint where I can obtain these representations, which I have not received. I may tell him that the shortage of nurses in the area to which he refers is in the very institutions where pay and conditions are best.

Mr. Messer: Is it not the case that a probationer nurse at a hospital is undergoing training, and cannot leave merely because there is a better job somewhere else?

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMED FORCES (PENSIONS AND GRANTS).

Mr. Lipson: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware of the sense

of grievance felt by retired officers of the last war owing to the fact that their pensions have not been increased to meet the higher cost of living consequent on the present war; and will he give further consideration to the claims of these men and their dependants for an adjustment in their pensions?

The Minister of Pensions (Sir Walter Womersley): The provision made in the Royal Warrant of 2nd July, 1920, for the Disability Retired Pay or Additional Retired Pay of officers disabled in the last war, and for pensions to the widows and dependants of officers who lost their lives through that war, were based on a cost of living figure higher than that now prevailing, and there are accordingly no grounds for any increase at present.

Mr. Lipson: Arising out of that unsatisfactory answer, may I ask my right hon. Friend if he is aware that these men suffered a cut in 1936, and has he made an estimate as to what it would cost to restore that cut?

Sir W. Womersley: I am not aware of any cut in 1936.

Sir Ralph Glyn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in reply to a Question last year he said that this matter was under urgent consideration, not only in regard to disabled officers but for all persons, civil servants and otherwise, who are on a fixed pension; and will the matter be taken into consideration, in view of the high cost of living to-day?

Sir W. Womersley: I have nothing to do with Civil Service pensions at all.

Mr. Bevan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the House is more or less patiently awaiting action from him on this and other matters, and that unless we get action from him very quickly he is likely to have an awful lot of trouble on his hands, for we have been waiting a long time?

Sir W. Womersley: I seem to have a lot of trouble on my hands all the time, and I am prepared to face it. The Royal Warrant of 1920 provided for increases as and when the cost of living figure went beyond 215. We have not got anywhere near 215 yet.

Mr. Lipson: In view of the unsatisfactory' nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I intend to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Rhys Davies: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he will reconsider his attitude towards claims for pensions in cases where medical evidence does not support the view that the ailment from which the claimant is suffering, is either attributable to or aggravated by war service, especially in view of the fact that it is not possible for any medical man, in neurosis cases, to provide his Department with either positive or negative proof of attributability or aggravation?

Sir W. Womersley: The war pensions provisions for members of the Forces do not permit of an award of pension for disablement which is neither attributable to nor aggravated by war service. Successive Governments have maintained this principle as the only sound basis for such pensions, and I can hold out no hope of a departure from it. The question of connection with service in an individual case is one on which my medical officers are well qualified by their long experience to give me advice, and they give full consideration to all relevant factors, including the nature of the disabling condition as well as the service and medical history of the claimant. In neurosis cases I am acting on the advice of a conference of eminent medical experts on the subject presided over by Lord Horder.

Mr. Davies: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I submitted a case to him of a serving soldier who became a lunatic while serving in France, that the man is now certified as a lunatic and is in an asylum, that he has a wife and five children, all over 10 years of age, who are all on Poor Law relief, all because the doctor would not certify that his mental disturbance was caused by his service in the Army? The right hon. Gentleman hides behind that fact, and the man's doctor cannot make a statement.

Sir W. Womersley: I do not hide behind anything. I always face up to the facts. I am well aware of this case. In addition to my own medical officers, eminent experts, specialists in mental diseases, have given me their views and opinions on this question, and there is no doubt whatever that in this case the man's disability has nothing whatever to do with his service.

Mr. Davies: Why not appoint some independent tribunal, instead of allowing

the case to be settled by people paid by the right hon. Gentleman's Department?

Sir W. Womersley: This is a tribunal. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, indeed, it is; in the sense that the case goes to eminent medical specialists, independent of the Ministry, independent of myself, and what better appeal could be had than that? No layman can settle these questions; it must be a medical expert.

Mr. Buchanan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the last war persons knew the case against them and were supplied with all the facts; is he further aware that laymen have a point of view as well as medical men on these matters; and will he not consider giving a fair hearing to the person involved before deciding?

Sir W. Womersley: In every case those who represent the man are allowed to put their evidence before the medical experts. He gets a fair hearing. His local panel doctor can put a case forward, and it will be considered. I can assure the House that these medical experts do their job well. [Interruption.]

Mr. Rhys Davies: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Sir W. Womersley: If you do, you will be sorry you did. [Interruption.]

Mr. Buchanan: On a point of Order. Is it becoming for a member even of this Government to adopt an attitude of bullying towards an hon. Member who is exercising his ordinary Parliamentary rights?

Sir W. Womersley: On that point of Order. I repudiate any statement about bullying. The hon. Member knows that in every case he has brought to me—[Interruption].

Mr. Buchanan: That is not the thing. Again, Mr. Speaker, may I ask your guidance on this?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think the hon. Member needs my guidance. Hon. Members get rather excited at Question Time sometimes.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE.

WEEKLY WAGES (INCOME TAX).

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the number of manual workers liable to pay Income Tax; the proportion now actually paying it; and when it is expected that the full 100 per cent. of such taxation will become effective?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Kingsley Wood): The number of manual workers liable to pay Income Tax by deduction from their wages this year is some 5,500,000. The deduction of the tax due to commence at the beginning of January has started in over 90 per cent. of these cases, and it is anticipated that the deductions will start in the remaining cases within the next week or two.

Sir L. Lyle: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that he will be able to catch the Irish labourers who are working, in many cases on aerodromes and making very big money?

Sir K. Wood: I am looking into this.

BRITISH NATIONALS ABROAD (BANK ACCOUNTS).

Mr. Mander: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he proposes to take to compel adequate financial support to the war effort from wealthy British subjects now in the United States of America, in particular, at such places as New York, Long Island and the New England Coast, Santa Barbara, Del Monte and Carmel?

Sir K. Wood: As my hon. Friend is aware, there are powers to deal with certain classes of British subjects now in the United States, who were resident in this country at the beginning of the war, to whom I referred in my answer of 22nd January, as well as those who passed through this country on their way to the United States from other countries. I have also under consideration the possibility of taking further powers to prevent abuses.

Mr. Mander: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he expects to issue these new regulations?

Sir K. Wood: I hope very shortly; they are now under consideration.

Mr. Hannah: Is Hollywood deliberately or accidentally omitted?

EXCESS PROFITS TAX.

Mr. A. Edwards: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in any new proposals regarding Excess Profits Tax, he will remove the anomaly which requires businesses working under almost identical conditions as to turnover, capital employed, and profits, to pay disproportionate amounts, which anomaly has the effect of guaranteeing standard profits to some companies and no profits to others and discouraging manufacturers whom he is urging to greater production?

Sir K. Wood: I cannot agree with my hon. Friend that the position to which he refers is anomalous or that the effect of the Excess Profits Tax is such as he suggests. The Excess Profits Tax is essentially a tax, not on a trader's profits as such, but on the excess of his profits over his standard profits, which are normally determined by reference to his profits of a pre-war standard period. Two concerns making similar profits under similar conditions now may well have very different standard profits and very different excess profits, but in any case the trader is left with his standard profits to which the tax does not apply.

Mr. Edwards: Is the Minister aware that he has not answered the Question, which is causing a considerable amount of trouble in the country, and is he not aware that an exact case has been submitted to him of two people with the same amount of capital earning almost identical profits—each making £12,000—of whom one paid £10,000 in Excess Profits Tax and the other only £2,000, and that as the years go on this is bound to cause considerable friction in the country?

Sir K. Wood: My hon. Friend has been to me several times about the Excess Profits Tax at 100 per cent., but the position remains as I have stated it.

POST-WAR PLANNING (UTHWATT COMMITTEE'S REPORT).

Mr. Graham White: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Buildings when the Final Report of Mr. Justice Uthwatt's Committee on Post-War Reconstruction was received; and why it has not been published?

Mr. Stokes: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Buildings whether he will state the reasons for the delay in the publication of the Final Report of the Uthwatt Committee, having regard to the fact that the interim Report was completed early in 1941, though only published in July, 1941?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Buildings (Mr. Hicks): My Noble Friend has not received any further Report from the Committee since the Interim Report which was presented to Parliament last July.

Mr. Stokes: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he would consider making contact with some other representative of the Government and arranging that the learned counsel who is mainly engaged on the production of this Report is relieved from other work, so that he can devote his time to it, and get the Report out at an early date?

Mr. Hicks: My hon. Friend asked why the Report had not been published, and I thought a very proper answer was that it had not yet been received.

Mr. Stokes: But will the hon. Gentleman consider the suggestion that the reason it has not been received is that not sufficient time has been given to it?

Mr. White: When will it be possible to introduce the legislation which is foreshadowed, and when will it be considered by the Government?

Mr. Hicks: That is another question.

ROYAL ORDNANCE FACTORIES (MANAGEMENT REMUNERATION).

Mr. Mander: asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply whether, in view of the low salaries paid to the management in Government factories as compared with those paid in industry generally, he will consider the advisability of permitting remuneration to be at the standard rate?

Mr. Boulton (Lord of the Treasury): I have been asked to reply. The rates of pay of managerial grades in the Royal Ordnance Factories are constantly under review and there has been a recent increase.

Mr. Mander: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the remuneration of managers of Royal Ordnance Factories is very small

indeed compared with what managers in private factories are paid, and is it not essential to bring their remuneration up to the proper standard?

Mr. Boulton: Perhaps my hon. Friend will give notice of that Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRINIDAD (WAR CONTRIBUTIONS).

Mr. David Adams: asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that since 1919 Trinidad, West Indies, has supplied to the British war effort by way of gifts and loans, the sum of £2,300,000; and whether, in view of the financial requirements for development and social welfare of that colony, he will recommend to the Governor that such grants be now discontinued?

Mr. Boulton: I have been asked to reply. My Noble Friend is aware of the generous contributions which have been made to His Majesty's Government by Trinidad. There is a special agreement regarding the cost of defence measures undertaken in that Colony by which the cost is, with certain exceptions, met by His Majestys's Government, and the Colonial Government pays a fixed defence contribution. For 1941 and subsequent war years this amounts to $1,250,000 a year. In accordance with the policy laid down in my Noble Friend's circular despatch to Colonial Governors of 5th June, 1941 (published as Cmd. 6299), it is not proposed that any sums in addition to this contribution should in future he offered by the Colony as gifts to His Majesty's Government. Sums surplus to immediate requirements in the Colony for current expenditure and development may still be offered as interest-free loans, thus remaining available for development expenditure after the war. Trinidad has offered to make such a loan during 1942 amounting to $1,500,000 and this offer has been gratefully accepted by His Majesty's Government. This still leaves very considerable sums available to the Colonial Government for expenditure on development and welfare.

Mr. Adams: Does the hon. Gentleman consider it a sensible procedure, in the case of those Dependencies which are themselves penurious, to accept these gifts?

Mr. Boulton: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would study the reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — PETROL RATION.

Mr. Lipson: asked the Secretary for Petroleum why he has abolished the basic petrol ration for commercial vehicles while retaining it for private motor-cars?

The Secretary for Petroleum (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd): The issue of basic rations to private cars is affected by considerations different from those applicable to goads vehicles.

Mr. Lipson: Does not the hon. Gentleman think that owners of commercial vehicles have a grievance in that their basic ration is done away with while private owners will still have theirs with which to do as they like? Would it not have been more in the national interest to start by abolishing the basic ration for private motorists rather than that of commercial users?

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL WAR CABINET.

Mr. Mander: asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider the advisability, in connection with any Dominion representation in the British Cabinet, of arranging that these shall be on a reciprocal basis, giving the British High Commissioner or some Minister appointed for the purpose access to Dominion Cabinets?

The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill): I do not at present see any need for such an approach as the hon. Member suggests in his Question.

Mr. Mander: Does the Prime Minister not think that there will be a certain grievance if the Dominions have access to our Cabinet and we have none to theirs? While we might not wish to make use of it, would it not be a reasonable thing to ask as part of the arrangement?

Sir H. Morris-Jones: Can the Prime Minister indicate when he will be in a position to make a statement to the House on the matter of the Imperial War Cabinet?

The Prime Minister: There is another Question on that subject.

Sir T. Moore: asked the Prime Minister when the new Imperial War Cabinet or Directorate will begin to function; and whether it has yet been decided who shall be its members?

The Prime Minister: The proposals which I referred to in my statement the other day for associating Dominion representatives with the War Cabinet do not involve any change in the United Kingdom membership of the War Cabinet. The proposal of the Australian Government was that they should have a representative at the War Cabinet who should have the right to be heard in the formulation and direction of policy. I replied that we were in agreement with this proposal, and for a good many months past Sir Earle Page has been exercising these rights. We have informed the Governments of Canada, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa that the same facilities are available for them if they wish to take advantage of them. We have as yet had no formal reply from New Zealand. I understand that Canada and South Africa are satisfied with the existing arrangements for consultation—indeed they expressed themselves strongly an this point—and do not at present wish to attach special representatives to the War Cabinet here.

Sir T. Moore: Could the Prime Minister say, in the case of those representatives who do wish to attend our War Cabinet, whether they will have a say in the decisions or whether they will merely be there to give advice?

The Prime Minister: Giving advice is having a say in the decision. It is not the custom to decide these matters by counting heads.

Mr. Granville: Does not the Prime Minister's answer mean that there will be no real change at all in the existing practice?

The Prime Minister: So far as I gather, the request of the Australian Government makes no change in what has actually been going on here since Sir Earle Page arrived, and been going on with very satisfactory results.

Oral Answers to Questions — TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING.

Mr. Bossom: asked the Prime Minister which Minister will be responsible for introducing the promised Town Planning Bill; and which Ministry Will have the task of administering it when it becomes law, as it was officially announced on Friday, 23rd January, 1942, that the Ministry of Works and Buildings has no planning powers or ambitions?

The Prime Minister: The future policy for urban and rural development and for the exercise of the powers of the central Government under the Town and Country Planning Acts, including the powers which will be available under the proposed legislation, is under consideration by the Government. It is hoped to make an announcement shortly.

Mr. Bossom: Is the Prime Minister aware that people have understood that since the end of 1940 this matter has been seriously studied, and that they are very anxious to get information of the Government's policy on this situation?

Oral Answers to Questions — POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION.

Mr. George Griffiths: asked the Minister without Portfolio whether he is aware of the serious disparities in the present structure of the social services, including workmen's compensation; and whether his post-war plans will include the consideration of proposals for improvement and for equality of assistance to meet equal measures of social disability?

The Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Arthur Greenwood): I am fully aware that our system of social services, greatly as it has improved the general standard of life, has certain inequalities, disparities and gaps. It is the primary task of the Interdepartmental Committee under Sir William Beveridge to recommend such improvements as will give uniform assistance in all cases of need. The committee is meeting regularly and hearing evidence. Workmen's compensation is included in its terms of reference.

Mr. Griffiths: Do we understand from that answer that the State-insured person now getting 18s. will get at least a similar amount for compensation, and that compensation is to go up by 50 to 100 per cent.?

Mr. Greenwood: My hon. Friend had better await the report of the committee. What I have said is that the committee are considering equality of treatment for equality of harm or injury.

Mr. Rhys Davies: Is it open to the Beveridge Committee to consider taking workmen's compensation completely out of the hands of insurance companies?

Mr. Greenwood: That is undoubtedly within their terms of reference.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSE OF COMMONS CHAMBER.

Sir Percy Hurd: asked the Prime Minister whether the Government will invite suggestions and plans for the new House of Commons from architects so as to ensure the fullest advantage of sun-aspect and natural ventilation or air conditioning and provide the necessary additional accommodation for Members, visitors and the Press of the outside Empire and the United States of America?

The Prime Minister: I understand that preliminary information is being collected by the Ministry of Works and Buildings with a view to the preparation of plans and the starting of the work when hostilities are over. As has already been announced, the House will be consulted before final plans are made. There is no question of altering the traditional character of the Chamber.

Sir P. Hurd: While accepting that fact may I ask the Prime Minister whether attention is being paid to the earnest representations of the Overseas Empire Press and the Press of the United States that they should be given better accommodation in this House?

The Prime Minister: That, I think, is being put right.

Sir Percy Harris: Will the Prime Minister see that the traditional character of the ventilation of the old House of Commons is changed?

The Prime Minister: I especially excepted that traditional feature.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

WOMEN'S LAND ARMY (GREATCOATS).

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether there is any provision for the supply of greatcoats to members of the Women's Land Army; and, if so, whether all members have now been supplied?

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson): The issue of greatcoats to members of the Women's Land Army is in progress. Owing to difficulties connected with the supply of cloth, it has as yet only been possible to equip about two-thirds of the Land Army's employed volunteers. Further deliveries are now being received from manufacturers and the coats are being distributed as rapidly as possible.

Mr. Sorensen: Could the Minister say whether they will be delivered before the winter is finished?

Mr. Hudson: I hope so, but I cannot promise.

WAGES, RENTS AND PRICES.

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the increase in wages granted to agricultural workers, he will take steps to safeguard them against any increase in rent; and whether he can make a statement in this connection for the guidance of farm-workers who are tenants?

Mr. Hudson: Where a farm worker holds a cottage from his employer, whether by virtue of a contract of service or of a separate contract of tenancy, the amount at which the employer can reckon the value of the cottage in part payment of the minimum wage is regulated by Orders made by the Agricultural Wages Committees. Workers who rent cottages from persons other than their employers have the same protection under the Rent Restrictions Act as any other tenants.

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is now in a position, in conjunction with the Ministry of Food to make some pronouncement on the adjustments in prices for farm produce necessitated by the increase granted to farm-workers?

Mr. Price: asked the Minister of Agriculture what steps are being taken to readjust the prices of agricultural produce in view of the recent increased expenditure which farmers have incurred?

Mr. Hudson: As I indicated in my reply to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Sudbury (Colonel Burton) on 29th January, this matter is still under active consideration, and I hope that a statement will be made shortly.

Mr. De la Bère: Is it not a fact that the Government promised to adjust these prices, and is it not also a fact that it is not the fault of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, but of the Ministry of Food, who seem to take some trouble to keep this matter going on, with the result that no adjustment is possible because of their delaying tactics?

Mr. Price: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a big time-lag between the imposition of these new expenses upon farmers and the possible increase which is coming to them?

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: Is the Minister aware that prices of green vegetables in shops have already gone up by 400 per cent. as compared with 1938 retail selling prices? Will he consider that fact in relation to the other matters referred to in the Question?

Mr. Hudson: That is a matter for the Ministry of Food. Prices of vegetables are not controlled by my Department.

Mr. De la Bère: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Vernon Bartlett: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether it is a principle accepted by his Department that the prices received by farmers for their produce should rise or fall according to the cost of production?

Mr. Hudson: The principle accepted by the Government is that the general level of prices for agricultural produce should be such as to provide farmers with a reasonable return for their work and enterprise, after meeting costs of production.

ANGLO-AMERICAN CO-OPERATION.

Mr. Bartlett: asked the Minister of Agriculture what action is proposed to develop that co-operation between farmers of this country and of the United States of America, initiated during Mr. L. F. Easterbrook's recent visit to the latter country on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture?

Mr. Hudson: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Devizes (Sir P. Hurd) on 22nd January.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY (TANK ACCIDENT, LINCOLNSHIRE).

Mr. Thorne: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can give any information in connection with the death of Second-Lieutenant Hobson, of the Royal Tank Regiment, and three others seriously injured, when a tank overturned on a Lincolnshire hill on Friday, 30th January?

The Financial Secretary to the War Office (Mr. Sandys): A court of inquiry is being held on this accident. I must await its report before I make any statement.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: Might I ask whether the Prime Minister has any statement to make about the forthcoming Business?

The Prime Minister: The Business will be as follows:
First Sitting Day.— Second Reading of the Securities (Validation) Bill; Committee and remaining stages of the India (Federal Courts Judges) Bill [Lords]; Committee stage of the Restoration of Pre-War Trade Practices Bill; and Report and Third Reading of the War Orphans Bill and Patents and Designs Bill [Lords].
Second Sitting Day.—The Adjournment will be moved, and a Debate will take place on the Shipping situation. It will be necessary, in order to do justice to the subject, that the Debate on Shipping should take place in Secret Session.
Third Sitting Day.—Report and Third Reading of the Restoration of Pre-War Trade Practices Bill; and of the Landlord and Tenant (Requisitioned Land) Bill.

Sir P. Harris: When will my right hon. Friend be in a position to define the duties of the new Minister of Production, his relation to the Admiralty and the Ministry of Labour, and the kind of reorganisation that will be made?

The Prime Minister: Naturally, I should not have submitted the list to the King without having examined all those aspects. There are still some minor details which require clarification, and I think it would be better if I made a short statement to the House on the First Sitting Day, defining the duties of the Minister. At the same time, a White Paper will be issued.

Mr. Bevan: Will the right hon. Gentleman, in preparing his statement, take into account the desirability of having a spokesman of the Ministry of Production in the House of Commons?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir; in fact, I can relieve the hon. Member's anxiety at this moment. The Minister of Supply will

act as spokesman for the Ministry of Production in the House of Commons, and, of course, any member of the War Cabinet can speak for that Ministry at any time.

Mr. Bevan: As the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Supply will not be a member of the War Cabinet, will there not be some difficulty owing to the Ministry of Production being represented in this House by an inferior Minister?

The Prime Minister: I do not think so. A great many matters have to be dealt with in the House of Commons by Ministers who are not Members of the War Cabinet. The pressure that has been put on me from many quarters has not been to extend the War Cabinet, but to keep it as small as possible.

Mr. Maxton: Will the right hon. Gentleman be in a position to submit the Treaty with Ethiopia to the House for its approval?

The Prime Minister: The act is done. I have had a very cordial telegram from the Emperor on the completion of the task—

Mr. Maxton: I should imagine he would be pleased.

The Prime Minister: —but it the House wishes to have a discussion, it could be arranged through the usual channels. I quite admit that the matter raises all kinds of difficult dilemmas.

Mr. Shinwell: In view of the fact that President Roosevelt has made a very frank statement on the shipbuilding and shipping position, and that there have been many statements about it in the American Press, why is it necessary to have a Secret Session on the subject?

The Prime Minister: Of course, a case can be stated in public; but it would not be the case which ought to be put before the House to enable it to form a proper judgment.

Mr. Bellenger: Will the right hon. Gentleman be in a position soon to make a statement on Service pay and allowances?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir; I hope to make a statement on that point on the next Sitting Day.

FRONT OPPOSITION BENCH (MINISTERIAL OCCUPANTS).

Mr. Mander: Mr. Speaker, I desire to ask for your guidance on a matter of which I have given you notice—whether it is in accordance with the traditions and customs of this House for Members of the Government to sit on the Front Opposition Bench?

Mr. Speaker: It is my desire, in giving Rulings of this kind, always to ensure that the House realises that I have no direct authority. As a matter of fact, no place in this House is allotted to any particular Member; but, beyond that, it is the usual custom of this House that the Front Government Bench is occupied by members of the Government and the Front Opposition Bench by members of the official Opposition. It has been necessary to modify these provisions, because there does not happen to be any official Opposition; and, as "no man can serve two masters," it is very undesirable for members of His Majesty's Government to sit on the Front Opposition Bench. It would undoubtedly lead to misunderstanding.

Mr. Shinwell: If no particular place in the House is allotted to any Member, have we the right to sit on the Government Front Bench?

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Member would come down to the House and be present during prayers and put a card on a seat on the Government bench, he would be entitled to sit there, but it would be contrary to the practice of the House that he should do so.

CIVIL ESTIMATES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1941).

Estimate presented,—of the further Sum required to be voted for the service of the year ending 31st March, 1942 [by Command]; referred to the Committee of Supply, and to be printed. [No. 37.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Ordered,
That the proceedings on the Motions relating to the National Expenditure Committee be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[The Prime Minister.]

OFFICES OR PLACES OF PROFIT UNDER THE CROWN.

Ordered,
That the Report from the Select Committee on Offices or Places of Profit under the Crown be now considered."—[Sir Dennis Herbert.]

Report considered accordingly.

Sir Dennis Herbert: I beg to move,
That this House recommends the Report from the Select Committee on Offices or Places of Profit under the Crown to the consideration of His Majesty's Government.
As the House did me the honour of putting me on this Committee, of which I was Chairman, they will, I hope, assent to my exercising the privileges of an ordinary Member to-day in putting this Motion. For that reason I have to occupy the seat in the House which I occupied for many years and from which, through no fault of my own, I failed to deliver many important and statesmanlike speeches that I had prepared with great care and trouble. After being debarred from ordinary speech in this House for so many years, I feel some of the diffidence of a new Member, and I am inclined to ask for some measure of the indulgence which is always granted in the case of a maiden speech. But indeed, to-day, I must ask the House for a little indulgence if my remarks occupy a longer time than that time which I have frequently pressed upon ordinary Members of the House should be amply sufficient for them to say all they have to say. My reason for this is that the Report with which I have to deal is a very long one, and it deals with matters of very considerable importance.
The whole question of Offices of Profit under the Crown is part of the structure of our British Constitution—a Constitution which is the result of growth and development over many centuries, a Constitution which is the envy of the civilised world and which cannot be reproduced by any modern-made Constitution. It would, therefore, be a blunder of the first magnitude to deal with this subject without very careful regard to its past history. What we have to do is not to invent or to devise some new scheme, but rather to tend, train, prune with care and nourish a plant which has been growing for many centuries, and which, we hope, will continue to grow for many centuries to come.
Therefore, the six or seven pages of this Report which are devoted to a historical survey are thoroughly justified. That survey was necessary for the consideration by the Committee of what we had to consider, and it is well that it should be placed on record for the benefit of future generations. Here it is only right that I should acknowledge the very great services which were rendered to the Committee by our learned Clerk, Sir Gilbert Campion, whom I am sorry not to see in his place to-day, owing to illness, because these historical paragraphs are mainly his work, and he devoted, as I know, a very considerable amount of overtime to it, for which, I am afraid, he will not get double pay. Those paragraphs may be relied upon, I think, as being absolutely correct. We had a learned historian on the Committee who could find no fault with them, and I took the opportunity myself of submitting those paragraphs privately, to one of the greatest constitutional historians of the day, and he returned them to me with the remark that he could not find a word in them to criticise or to alter.
I hope hon. Members will not form a false impression of the proceedings of the Committee by reason of something which results from the form in which the minutes of evidence are prepared, because it will be seen there, that a very large number of paragraphs in the Draft Report were disagreed with and other paragraphs were substituted. I think perhaps, therefore, hon. Members may like to know that the real reason for that was that, on account of certain reasons with which I need not worry the House, the original Draft Report contained a number of provisional paragraphs which were disagreed with and were withdrawn at my own request in order that more carefully considered paragraphs might be put in their place. In fact, the extraordinary absence of serious disagreement or divergence between Members of the Committee, representing as they do many and very different shades of opinion in the House, was quite remarkable. We naturally had our differences on matters of details, but in most cases they were settled to the satisfaction of the whole Committee, and there was no serious difference of opinion on any of the main questions which arise. Though it is true that at an early stage in the consideration of the Draft Report my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton

(Mr. Maxton) moved an Amendment to the effect that, having set out the chaotic condition of the law on this subject, we make no recommendations for improving it or restoring order out of chaos, which he described as destroying, the flexibility of the Constitution, but, finding himself in the position, not new to him, of being in a minority of one, he accepted that position with his usual dignity and good humour and proceeded to give us valuable assistance in that work of destruction, as he has described it. Apart from that, the House will note that the Draft Report, in the end, was passed unanimously by the Committee.
I want to draw the special attention of the House to paragraph 19 on page 13 of the Report, because the Committee there set out the three chief principles which could be deduced from the preceding historical survey and which should, I think, be kept carefully in mind in considering this subject. Those three principles are, first, the incompatibility of certain non-ministerial offices with membership of the House of Commons; second, the need to limit the control or influence of the House by the Executive Government, by means of an undue proportion of officers being Members of the House, and, third, the essential condition of a certain number of Ministers being Members of the House, for the purpose of ensuring control of the Executive by Parliament. If those principles are borne in mind, they will, I think, assist hon. Members to appreciate generally the recommendations which the Committee have made.
Our recommendations in regard to Part I are summarised in the form of the outlines of a Bill. I should here point out that Part I of the Report deals with the matter in normal times without regard to the present period of emergency. Questions relating to the period of emergency are dealt with in Part II. The state of the law in regard to this subject during the present period of emergency caused by the war is, like the war itself, in the nature of a nasty and unfortunate excrescence on the law in normal times, just as the war indeed is a nasty and unfortunate excrescence on the history of the civilised world. Hon. Members will please bear in mind that in the remarks I am about to make, I am dealing entirely with Part I and that all considera-


tions arising out of the present state of emergency should be put out of mind for the present.
The Bill which we propose contains nothing of a revolutionary character. Indeed, it is mainly a consolidation and clarification of the law as it stands, with some slight amendments in points of detail and a few new proposals of a modest but I hope a useful character to bring it more into accord with the present times, such, for instance, as the proposed abolition of the rights of the common informer. I am not proposing to deal with the details of the different offices which are specially referred to in the Report, because I think the House will find it more convenient to postpone consideration of these details until the proposed Bill comes before the House. Then will be the appropriate time for considering those questions, but I want to go briefly through the provisions of the proposed Bill which hon. Members will find set out in heavy type in paragraph 63 on page 35 of the Report.
Clause 1, as I will describe it, is really the basis of the Bill. It provides that the holding of offices under the Crown shall disqualify for membership of the House of Commons, subject to two important exceptions. Those exceptions are dealt with in Clauses 2 and 3. The first is a limited number of Ministers of the Crown, and the second is holders of offices which may, perhaps for convenience, be described as harmless offices, that is, offices of a non-political nature, the holding of which, I think, no one would suggest is incompatible with membership of this House. Clause 4 preserves two archaic, sinecure offices which might almost be described as museum curiosities, namely, the Stewardships of the Chiltern Hundreds and of the Manor of Northstead, but which are still of definite and practical use as the only convenient means by which the ordinary Member can resign at will his membership of the House. Here, even at the expense of occupying the House for another minute or two, I would like, if the House does not object, to read a description of the office of the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds written by Mr. F. S. Parry in 1893, a description which is, I think, substantially correct to this day. It says:
In its present development, the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds is a bewildering anomaly. Any account of it reads like an unwritten chapter from Rabelais on 'How Pantagruel arrived at the Island of Paradox'.

In the eye of the law an office, it has no official duties, functions or characteristics of any sort, whatsoever; a post of profit, no vestige of emoluments attaches to it; granted by the Sovereign, Her Majesty has absolutely no voice in making the appointment. Formally nominated as Crown's agent over an estate where the Crown has no rights, the Steward has to account for moneys which he cannot receive and to hold courts which no suitor ever attends. In return, he enjoys wages, fees and allowances, fully as substantial as the Emperor's new clothes in the Hans Andersen story and privileges and pre-eminences are conferred upon him, which exist nowhere out of Cuckoo Cloudland. In actual practice, the House of Commons jealously asserts its right of control over an appointment which it can neither make nor cancel, an appointment the disposal of which being rigorously guarded from the slightest suspicion of any political motive is entrusted to whatever political party happens to be temporarily in power and rests not with the Leader of the House, but with the one Minister who has no shred of patronage at his disposal. The Minister in turn sets his seal to a document which never a seal touches and sends greetings to all to whom it comes, before locking it up in his own boxes for ever. Nor is this all. Until a few decades ago, it has been his wont to declare his 'especial trust and confidence in the care and the fidelity' of the blackest sheep in the House, and by his agency many a Celtic patriot, pledged never to accept office under a Saxon Government, has even nowadays forsworn himself for months and years in blissful ignorance of his crime.
I think that is, on the whole, a fairly correct description of the office and justifies its being preserved as a museum piece in addition to the justification that it is of some practical use to hon. Members when they wish to retire.
Now I come to the Clauses again. Clause 5 is to protect Members from the possibility of being excluded from membership by the action of the Executive, by being appointed to some disqualifying office without their consent. It is a matter which is not particularly likely to happen in practice, but it may be just as well to have it in this Bill. There is one case in which it might be of practical use, and that is in the case of the office of the High Sheriff of a county in England—an office which, I believe I am right in saying, cannot be refused unless the gentleman in question is able to put forward an excuse which is regarded as good, which he does not always succeed in doing.
Clause 6, about which, also, I think there will be no question, provides that pensions shall not be a disqualification unless they are such as can be determined at the will of the Crown otherwise than for good reason. Clause 7 deals with


a difficulty which may arise in drafting the Bill in defining the meaning of the phrase "office under the Crown," or whatever phrase is used for that purpose as an office the holder of which is to be disqualified. I think we rightly interpreted our terms of reference fairly widely to enable us to consider some offices which, possibly, are not, strictly speaking, offices under the Crown but which, possibly, are so comparable with such offices that it would be altogether an anomaly to exclude them from our consideration at the present time. It may, therefore, be necessary in order to avoid doubt to disqualify expressly the holders of certain offices which, perhaps, might not be held to fall within the general expression to be used to describe the offices which disqualify. The best way in which I can explain this point is by giving as an illustration in the case of the Recorder of London being appointed and paid by the Corporation of London, it is not possible to describe his office as an office under the Crown, although, it is to be noted, he cannot exercise his judicial office until the Crown's assent is given. It has been recognised now for many years that his office disqualifies from membership of this House.
Clause 8 is a new proposal designed as a piece of machinery which may be found useful in order to save a Member from losing his seat through inadvertence. I will not go into this matter in detail, but hon. Members will find noted in the margin the paragraphs of the Report which refer to the several clauses and will find, I hope, ample justification in these paragraphs for these different recommendations.
Clause 9 is a technical provision which is necessary in a Bill of this kind—a revocation of the existing Statute law which it is intended to be enacted or superseded—but the last words of the Clause are important and should be noted because they provide that the existing law as to penalties is to be repealed without re-enactment or substitution. The object of this is to get rid of the common informer, who has been described on many occasions by somewhat uncomplimentary adjectives. He seems to be a totally unnecessary person in present circumstances. Again, I will not go into arguments on this point, but I ask those who are interested in the matter to

read with great care the excellent Joint Memorandum which Sir Gilbert Campion and Sir Granville Ram prepared and which will be found on page 176 of the full copy of the Report. That deals with what is a matter of very great interest indeed, namely, the principle which the House of Commons has for so many centuries jealously guarded—its own sole and exclusive right of dealing with questions of membership of this House. I think hon. Members will find that the House has full power if it accepts the Committee's recommendations, to deal with all questions which may arise and to exclude from the House anyone who may be disqualified. The preservation of that right of the House of Commons is, I think, one of very great importance, and it is well that hon. Members should consider the matter as it is set out in that excellent Memorandum.
The 10th and last of these Clauses is to provide that when the Bill is passed it should come into operation forthwith. I need not say anything more about that at the moment, because I shall have a word or two to say about it when I come to Part II of the Report. I have already said that questions of detail will be more appropriately discussed on the Bill than to-day, and, therefore, that is the reason for the rather indefinite form of the Motion which I am moving now, namely, that the House recommends the Report for the consideration, the favourable consideration, I hope, of His Majesty's Government. I have specially avoided asking the House to do anything which might seem like pledging themselves to every detail of the recommendations contained in the Report. Inevitably there must be differences of opinion on some of those matters, and the Committee would not wish to dogmatise on details. In fact, we should regret it if the re commendations were carried out in detail, because, by an unfortunate slip, we have made one recommendation which would have the effect of disqualifying from this House an old and respected Member whom I see sitting a few benches below me, because we have described him as the First Church Estates Commissioner when it should have been the Second Church Estates Commissioner. This shows that in a matter of this kind there may be a number of points which will require very careful consideration when the legislation comes before the House.
One more word about the form of the Bill. Hon. Members who have not had the advantage of all the knowledge which the Committee obtained may think that the simplest way of dealing with the matter would be to compile two lists of offices, one, offices which disqualify, the other offices which do not disqualify. That would, I can assure the House, be quite impracticable for a variety of reasons, but, further, I think the form which we have recommended of starting off by disqualifying all the holders of Offices of Profit under the Crown, with the two classes of exceptions to which I have already referred, is the right and proper one, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution on this matter.
If the House agree to the Motion I am proposing, I must express the hope that the Government will give instructions to the Treasury Counsel to put in hand the drafting of the Bill recommended in Part I forthwith—I have no doubt it will take some time to do—and that they will then consider such draft and introduce a Bill into the House as soon as may be reasonably practicable, having regard, of course, to the overriding claims of the prosecution of the war. The Bill as a whole would, I hope, meet with but little, if any, opposition. A number of points would be the subject of discussion in Committee and possibly on Report, but I see no reason why it should raise any party questions, and I think that with general good will and support it ought not to occupy an undue amount of Parliamentary time.
Before I finish with Part I of the Report, I must refer to two or three recommendations not requiring legislation. One is that we should pass the necessary Standing Orders in order to set up convenient machinery for enabling the House to deal efficiently with questions or matters which may arise as to the vacation of seats through acceptance of office, dealt with in paragraphs 57 and 58 of the Report. The other point is the interesting one as to Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I commend to the very careful attention of the House what I hope will be regarded as a moderate and carefully considered statement in regard to those hon. Members. The Committee think that the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries should be

limited, and perhaps even reduced at the present time. We cannot deal with them by legislation, because they are curious creatures, neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring. You cannot abolish them. They have not sufficient existence to be abolished, because no one can prevent a Minister of the Crown coming to a Back-Bench Member who happens to be a friend of his and saying to him, "Look here, run and speak to Mr. So-and-so for me, and tell him I consider he is behaving very badly, or he is behaving very well." Therefore, it is a peculiar office, but, none the less, in fact it has raised, whether justifiably or not, a kind of suspicion that it is increasing the voting power of the Government and increasing the restrictions on the independence of a number of Members of the House. Therefore, it is a matter which I think should be carefully considered, and nothing more is required in regard to it than that the Government should sympathise with what we have recommended and establish some such principle as we suggest.
I come now to Part II of the Report, which deals with the matter from the point of view of the present emergency period. The first Part is undoubtedly the most important from the point of view of its dealing with a permanent matter. Part II deals with what is only a temporary matter, and a matter that is, in a sense, of much less importance, but it is none the less very important as a temporary matter, and the Committee gave very meticulous and careful consideration to questions arising on the subject of the holding of offices under the Crown during this period of emergency. The Committee had some difficulty, and diffidence indeed, in making many recommendations in regard to the period of emergency. The real reason for this is that this legislation and other legislation, sometimes by Statutory Rules and Orders, for the purposes of the war has been so lately considered and discussed in the House that we did not feel it would be respectful to the House or right that we should express any very strong opinions on such matters unless there was very good reason for it. Moreover, the emergency Acts, with one exception to which I shall have to refer in a moment, are all in the form of temporary Acts which come to an end either with the termination of the period


of emergency or earlier, if it is so decided. The Emergency Powers Defence Act, which is the basis of all this war-time legislation, as hon. Members know, can only be continued in force from year to year by an Address to the Crown by both Houses of Parliament.
Two of our recommendations under Part II require legislation, and two only. One is the Act which deals with the appointment of Ministers of the Crown in war-time, which for some reason—I think that I have discovered to some extent what it is—does not contain any provision for its coming to an end, either before or from the end of the period of emergency. The Committee recommends the House to pass legislation to provide for that Act coming to an early end, and I feel sure that the House will accept that recommendation and put the matter right. The other matter requiring legislation is that very important one of the House of Commons Disqualification (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1941, which will expire, unless renewed or re-enacted, on 6th March. Therefore, it will have to be dealt with by the House within the next few weeks.

Mr. A. Bevan: Would the right hon. Gentleman enlighten me on one rather important matter? On what date will the emergency legislation, which now permits the practices described in Part II, if ever, come to an end?

Sir D. Herbert: I am not quite sure whether I understand exactly what is the hon. Member's point.

Mr. Bevan: At a certain time the emergency comes to an end, and Part I of this recommendation becomes alive. At what point does the emergency end? As I understand it, it does not come to an end at a definite date. In other words at what point will Part I become alive and Part II die?

Sir D. Herbert: I am glad that the hon. Member has put that point, which, of course, is dealt with fully in the Report. It is true that the termination of the period of emergency is a date which we cannot foresee. It does not mean the termination of actual hostilities; it is a date which has to be fixed by Order in Council after the war, but, if the hon. Member will read the Report with care, he will see that we have specially dealt

with that. It is for that very reason that we recommend the House to pass the Bill to carry out Part I as soon as it is practicable, in order that it may be there on the Statute Book, subject to the protection of the temporary legislation, if necessary, ready to be put into force directly it can be. I bear in mind with considerable satisfaction the Prime Minister's statement in this House, in the course of a speech which, I think, he made in October last, in which he said that he himself hoped this emergency legislation would come to an end as early as possible, not only at the end of the war, but some of it, he hoped, even earlier.

Mr. Bevan: In view of the fact that the powers under which the Executive can make these additional Offices of Profit under the Crown will be kept alive unless the Executive, by Order in Council, bring that emergency to an end, would it not have been possible for the Committee to have recommended that the House from year to year should decide that the emergency was still in existence? It would leave the matter in the hands of the House and take it away from the Executive.

Sir D. Herbert: Yes, Sir, I think that is so already. As I have said, as regards the House of Commons Disqualification (Temporary Provisions) Act, it comes to an end on 6th March, and the Committee expressly recommend, the hon. Member will see, that any re-enactment or renewal of that Act should preserve all those limitations which are already in the existing Act, including the one which provides that the Act shall come to an end again on the expiration of another 12 months.

Sir Percy Harris: Would it not be convenient for it to come under the Expiring Laws Continuation Act?

Sir D. Herbert: No, Sir. If I may say so, I am very glad indeed that it was not included in that Act which was passed recently, because I think that the question ought to be reconsidered every year and quite possibly amended every year, and, indeed, we have made some suggestions for its possible amendment. The Committee, in regard to this Act, the House of Commons Disqualification (Temporary Provisions) Act, felt, and felt quite rightly, I think, that it was not a matter in which they should make any very definite and strong recommendations.


It was fully debated in this House just under a year ago, and it will, no doubt, be fully debated again before 6th March. Therefore, we felt that the proper course was to try and see whether we could think of any useful amendments which might be introduced into the new Act for the benefit of the House on the lines already suggested, in the direction of putting the power in the hands of the House as far as possible and not leaving everything entirely to the Executive Government. Therefore, we put forward a few suggestions rather than recommendations. These suggestions we have made will be more properly discussed when an opportunity comes, as it must do, within the next few weeks on the introduction of legislation for renewing that Act.
But there is one of these suggestions upon which I must say a few words, namely, the first one, which was designed to draw attention more effectively to certificates given under the Act by the First Lord of the Treasury. We suggested that such certificates might be formally communicated to Mr. Speaker in order that he might announce them to the House. As I made this suggestion to the Committee, I must take responsibility for it. Therefore, I feel obliged to tender my apologies to you, Mr. Speaker, for having made the suggestion without having consulted you. It has since been pointed out to me, as no doubt you, Mr. Speaker, would have done if I had consulted you, that this suggestion might have the undesirable effect of appearing to make the Speaker of the House in some sense the mouthpiece of the Government by communicating to the House decisions of the Government. The whole House will, I am sure, agree with the importance of their Speaker not only being, but appearing to be, completely free from any tutelage of the Government of the day which might be calculated to be an embarrassment to him. Moreover, such a course as that suggested might easily be misunderstood outside the House by those who are not fully acquainted with the procedure and methods of the House, and it would be most undesirable that, through misunderstanding in the Press or among the general public, the position of the Speaker should be in any way impaired. In these circumstances I feel confident that the House will comply with the request I now make that this suggestion may be abandoned. The House may well

consider, when the time comes, some different method of drawing attention to the grant of certificates under the Act. Possibly with your consent, Sir, arrangements might be made for the granting of these certificates to be reported in the OFFICIAL REPORT, or some step of that kind, but that will be more properly considered when the legislation is before us.

Mr. Mander: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think, as an alternative to the Speaker, that it might be arranged that the Prime Minister should, with his consent, make a statement and that that would be the most effective way?

Sir. D. Herbert: I had thought of that. I mentioned it for the reason that I thought it would be more appropriately discussed in a week or two when we had the Bill before us, but there are certain objections, as is often the case, to what seems to be the obvious course of procedure, and I think that an announcement from the Government Bench might lead to immediate discussion or Debate, which would be undesirable. However, that is a matter for future discussion.
I have come to an end of what I have to say, but I would close with just two or three observations. In the first place, I hope that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will realise the importance of this matter. Secondly, I hope they will realise, what I believe to be the case, that the Report is a very good one. I can say that without any lack of modesty because, though proposed by the Chairman, it is by no means the work of the Chairman alone or any one, two or three Members of the Committee. The whole Committee and others worked very hard on it, and I hope the House will agree that on the whole they had dealt with the subject satisfactorily. The third thing I want to do is to acknowledge the assistance, good will and personal kindness and forbearance to myself of the other Members on the Committee and the various witnesses who came before us or supplied us with information in the form of memoranda, all of which was very useful to us. Although the Committee were hard worked, I think they enjoyed their hard work, and I am very grateful to them for the help they gave me. I hope the Motion will meet with the assent of the House.

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: In common, no doubt, with most Members present I have read through the text of the Report, and I have listened to my right hon. Gentleman's comprehensive speech. I think I shall be only putting words to what will be felt by others that he has expounded in full the Report which the Committee have written and that there is not a great deal left to say as to the details of their proposals which has not already been covered. In the circumstances I do not propose to go over all the matter again. I would rather make a few general observations and then refer to the Report generally and to one or two details. I cannot help feeling, when I read the Report, that what the remit really amounted to was that the Committee should re-open the question as to the death of Queen Anne. Having considered the matter very fully, they came to the decision that Queen Anne was very much alive, and what we are being asked to do is to concur in that judgment, and from what I know of hon. Members I think it very probable that they will so concur. Speaking broadly and in the main, I certainly shall vote "Aye" to the proposition.
I think the Report bears out the view that I have long held that, with the possible exception of the ancient Egyptians, we are the most conservative nation that has ever lived. We still bow to the altar when we come into the House from the far end on my left, not because there is an altar in the House, not because there was an altar in the House that was destroyed, not even because there was one in the House that preceded that, but, I believe, because there was one in two or three Houses before, to which we still do reverence when we come in. We still adhere to an ancient procedure which compels us to discuss matters on the Aljournment of the House when the very object of our discussion is not to adjourn the House but to carry through our Debate. When we at certain intervals proceed to another place in order to hear the Royal Assent given to our labours, that Assent is still given in Norman-French, which no one speaks at present and which has not been the language of the Court for many centuries. We still carry out the fiction that in some peculiar way a Money Bill is a special kindness which the dutiful subjects do for the Monarch of the day, and we still keep

up the fiction that in the first stages of a Money Bill the King's Consent has already been obtained.
I think hon. Members opposite who are called by the name "Conservative" are apt to suppose that, if by some curious mischance they were all to vacate their seats and, I will not say, Members sitting behind me came into a position of power and responsibility, but the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) or possibly even the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher), peopled the whole of the House with their own supporters, the whole pillars of the Constitution and the whole basis of our civilisation would fall in ruins. I do not believe it in the very least. I think that if they fell into a trance after a general election had brought about that result, they would, when they came to at the end of about four years, find practically every old landmark still in its place and all the outward forms in the Constitution persisting. They would have to look for any change with great care. Certainly they would not find a tithe of the alterations which have been made in Turkey, where the language, the script, the clothing, the religion and—perhaps what may be even more difficult to change—the whole relationship between the sexes have been altered since the last war. The curious thing about our British method of doing things is that it works. Somehow it has always managed to work in the past, and I have no doubt that it will continue to work in the future on one assumption.

Mr. Maxton: I am following this historical survey with great interest as a member of this Committee. My right hon. Friend commits himself to the view that our methods have always worked, but have there not been one or two outstanding periods when they just did not work?

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: Perhaps I should say that they have generally worked. That meets the incidental criticism of my hon. Friend. They will no doubt continue to work on one assumption, and that is that there will continue to be in future as in the past sufficient common sense in this country so that within the framework of the constitutional structure we shall be able to make changes that really matter. If ever the time should come when that common sense failed, I am certain it would destroy the


fabric of our life, because when a thing is unable to change it can, when it finally crystallises, only break to pieces in the end.
Before I relate all this to the structure of the Committee's Report I may perhaps be permitted to give one more illustration of what I mean by possibilities of change. If a man a century or so ago proved himself an extraordinarily capable initiator and organiser and built up a great business, his great grandson to-day is ennobled and he remains in charge of the business which his great grandfather created. It might not matter very much that he should have a title, but it would matter very considerably if he exercised serious control over the legislation of this country because of his ennobled position, and it would matter very much indeed if he were allowed to interfere in the growth of industry on the assumption that he had the talents of his great grandfather, when they might very well have gone to a second cousin once removed or to a great aunt and her offspring.
That brings me more directly to the subject-matter of to-day. What my right hon. Friend and the Committee have been trying to do is to see how the legislation of Queen Anne can be patched up so as to carry with it all the changes which have occupied the country in the intervening years. The broad structure which they propose we should set up is this: We should disqualify all Offices of Profit under or from the Crown, with certain exceptions. I think that that in the main is a proposition to which the House will be inclined to agree. When the Committee consider the exceptions, they do not consider them in general terms, but consider them in relation to specific offices. That, offhand, would not appear to be the ideal method, but it may be and probably is the most practical method of dealing with the question. Observe what is the effect of that. It is for the moment to stereotype the Cabinet and other Government positions to those which we already have in existence and to compel the Government to bring in fresh legislation if ever they want to create any additional Ministerial offices.

Sir D. Herbert: What my right hon. Friend says is not quite correct, certainly not in regard to the Cabinet and the Government, because, although we set out a list of ministerial offices, that list is really set out in order to show the type of

office-holder. The last item in the list is "any other office of a similar Ministerial character."

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: It may be that there is a loophole there, but when it comes to actual legislation I imagine that that will have to be carefully considered. I am not sure that what I have said would not be a good thing, because it would give the House of Commons a power to control and to prevent an unlimited expansion of the Government, which I imagine is the whole object of the scheme. I have supposed that the intention of the Committee was to compel legislation whenever fresh offices were to be made. There obviously must be some means of adding to the list of existing offices; otherwise, we should be putting the future into the strait jacket of the past. That is just what I was explaining must never happen within the British Constitution. The right hon. Gentleman gave us a charming description of the Chiltern Hundreds. From what I have described as the conservative character of the House of Commons and the British people I have no doubt that we shall preserve this interesting relic. The right hon. Gentleman rather suggested that there could be no other method of dealing with the matter. It would, however, have been possible to say that when a man wished to resign his seat he was entitled to do so. That would not be so picturesque, but it would be the simple method of handling the difficulty.
I come to the question of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. The right hon. Gentleman has already explained that by voting for his Motion we are not committing ourselves to every detail of the Report. If the detail with regard to Parliamentary Private Secretaries were covered, I should certainly be disposed to oppose the particular suggestions which the Committee have made under that head. The right hon. Gentleman has already anticipated the objections. How on earth will the Government prevent Ministers having the Parliamentary Private Secretaries which they have at the present time? The suggestion in the Report is that there should be one Parliamentary Private Secretary to each Ministry, not one to each Minister. I should have thought that anyone who had been in a Government or had been a Parliamentary Private Secretary would see that that


would be quite unworkable, because a Parliamentary Private Secretary is definitely related to his particular Minister, and to relate him only to the Ministry and have two Ministers using a kind of batman between them would surely produce great inconvenience.
But it would not very much matter if the proposal of the Committee were carried, because I am sure, even if it were more specific than it is, that the ingenuity of the British mind would be quite able to find a way through. I will suggest one straightaway. Supposing it were said that there were to be only so many Parliamentary Private Secretaries. It would be said, "We have only one Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Ministry, and he goes to the principal Minister," but the Under-Secretary could be allowed a "political devil" attached to himself—or some other charming phrase would be used—and that man would, of course, perform exactly the same functions under a different title as those of the Parliamentary Private Secretary attached to his chief. I think I have said enough with regard to the Report to show that it is, in my view, in accordance with the general conservative tendencies of this country, that it does no harm, that it preserves the framework of our Constitution and, I think, does not prevent those changes which the efflux of time and the economic, industrial and political life of the country and the world demand. For those reasons I can find no difficulty in giving it my support, and I believe that will be the verdict of the great majority of hon. Members.

Mr. Denman: I may perhaps be allowed to echo the gratitude of the House to the Committee and to my right hon. Friend the chairman of it who has so lucidly conveyed to us the views recorded in the Report. I hope that my right hon. Friend will find other occasions to leave the valley and to ascend the mountain and give us the pleasure of speeches from the high spot he now occupies. We are greatly indebted to the Committee for so learned a survey of an exceedingly difficult problem, and I think we shall all agree with the conclusions at which they have arrived. They express the commonsense of the matter and I shall be glad to support this Motion and to invite the Government to implement in

general the conclusions of the Report. Before I come to the Report, I should like to refer to an observation made by the right hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) in regard to the effect of this Report upon Ministerial offices. He seemed to imply that the Committee has power to create an indefinite number of new offices without legislation. I think he will find that all modern offices rest upon specific Statutes. For instance, I remember that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Parliamentary Secretaries to all these new Departments were all provided for by new Acts, and that procedure gave the House the power of saying that the Minister should not be so reinforced out of the House of Commons. It is a power which the House has always retained and I hope that it will be retained in future. At the present time we are, of course, living in very special conditions. A spawn of Ministries is being created out of emergency legislation, but that is a wholly abnormal condition.

Mr. Maxton: Did the hon. Gentleman say "spawn"?

Mr. Denman: Yes, s—p—a—w—n. Is that not a reasonable expression to use? I will leave my hon. Friend to select his own precise word. The Report makes quite clear the inherent objection of this House to allow the indefinite creation of offices of profit that can be filled only by Members of the House. It is obvious that if this went too far the Crown would have a power of bribery over the House that would militate against the free exercise of the powers of the House.
The Report has not dealt with one quite modern feature of this question of profit, that is, that the Crown makes these payments on top of the payment of salaries to Members of Parliament. We know that in the case of all the old Ministries that was not the process; that there the moment a Member accepts office and joins the Front Bench he ceases to enjoy his salary as a Member of Parliament. But while that applies to any in this list of 80 it does not apply to other offices of profit that the Crown may confer, and surely that does produce a rather undesirable position. I know that in the Labour party we have always objected to a man taking two salaries for two whole-time jobs. I suggest that the true theory is that, generally speaking, it is objection-


able to add to an M.P.'s salary further pay for a whole-time occupation. Under present conditions, of course, those things happen. Members are entitled to enjoy their military pay as well as their Parliamentary pay. In the last war I believe we were a good deal more strict. The practice then—though there was no law about it—was that the individual took whichever pay he preferred. If he enjoyed high military rank he probably took the pay of that rank, but if he were a lowly subaltern he probably preferred the pay of a Member of Parliament. I do not so much mind what happens under existing circumstances, which are abnormal, but I feel that as trustees of the public's money we ought to know what goes on. We in this House really have no idea of how many Members are receiving both their own pay and the pay attached to an office. I do not know whether the Front Bench is in a position to tell us the number of Members who are in receipt of both those sources of benefit. I do not want to know who the individuals are, but it would be good to have the broad picture. It is a thing to be inquired about, if not at this moment, then at some later stage.
The other point to which I wish to refer is the interesting section relating to Parliamentary Private Secretaries. May I suggest to my right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means that he really ought to have some lunch? What I am saying now can easily be read in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I do not like the paragraph on Parliamentary Private Secretaries in the Report, because the whole tenor of it implies that Parliamentary Private Secretaries, although not specifically members of the Government team, are in some special measure bound to the team, and that, by becoming Parliamentary Private Secretaries, they have lost a considerable amount of the independence which all Members ought to enjoy. If that is allowed to become the permanent impression about Parliamentary Private Secretaries, it is bad.

Mr. Maxton: Is it the permanent impression?

Mr. Denman: Yes, Sir, I think it is. The paragraph conveys the prevailing feeling, but it ought not to be the feeling, and the remedy is not to be found by increasing the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries and so, perhaps, en-

forcing the existing erroneous view, but by modifying our conception of the place of the Parliamentary Private Secretary in this House.

Mr. Silverman: This is rather an important point. Is the hon. Member suggesting that the paragraph in the Report, although it correctly interprets the feeling that we all have, nevertheless states a position which is not really correct? Is it not obviously and inevitably the case that when a Member of this House assumes a personal and direct position with regard to a Minister of the Crown in which his personal loyalties are inevitably bound up, he thereby puts himself in a position of less independence than is the case with Members who are not in such a direct relationship?

Mr. Denman: My hon. Friend is anticipating my argument. If he had waited, he would have found that I would have dealt with the point he raises. There is obviously a limiting of independence. Limitation of independence is inevitably associated with the loyalty that the individual must have to the Minister with whom he works. That loyalty cannot be put too high. He is bound hand and foot to his Minister. He must not speak on the subject of his Department, and his personal loyalty must be beyond any question. That ought not to extend to implying any special loyalty to the rest of the team. I suggest that the true position is that, associated with his complete personal loyalty to his Minister, there should be an equally complete independence of any personal obligation to other Ministers, other Departments, or the Government as a whole. The Parliamentary Private Secretary is working in a Department with a Minister, and I do not want to say anything which would limit the number of people occupying that position. I have a very great regard for that position. It confers opportunities of education which only those who have done such work can realise. Only those who have actually taken part in the administration of the country, in framing legislation and perhaps in answering Questions, realise what added experience it gives to the Member, making him a much more valuable person. Anybody who has been the Parliamentary Private Secretary of a first-rate Minister will endorse that statement.  do not want to see any limitation of their numbers, but I do want to see the inde-


pendence of the Parliamentary Private Secretary safeguarded. I should like to see my hon. Friends defend the trade union Parliamentary Private Secretaries in making a declaration of loyalty to their own Ministers as independent from all others.

Dr. Haden Guest: And give them the right to strike?

Mr. Denman: Of collective action, if there were any victimisation. I would remind hon. Members of the extremely interesting illustration which arose in the course of the last war. The great Coalition Government suffered only one defeat on the Floor of the House, and that was at the hands of a Parliamentary Private Secretary. Sitting in his proper place, behind the Minister, he moved an Amendment to a Government Motion and carried it against the Government. So effective was the Amendment that the Government had no choice but to accept it or to drop the Bill, and they dropped the Bill. I think the Parliamentary Private Secretary was exercising his proper function as a Member of the House, dealing with a matter in no way related to his own Department.

Mr. Garro Jones: I should like to remind the hon. Gentleman that a Parliamentary Private Secretary has access to private papers from all other Departments, as well as to Foreign Office telegrams, he may attend conferences between his own Minister and other Ministers, and inevitably he must become acquainted with the inside view of other Departments upon questions outside his own Department. That places him in an invidious position in respect of loyalty not only to his chief but to other Ministers as well.

Mr. Denman: The hon. Gentleman has raised a real point. The practice of Ministers in relation to their Parliamentary Private Secretaries varies very much. I do not think it used to be usual that the Parliamentary Private Secretary saw Foreign Office telegrams; that was the business of the official Private Secretary. I agree that if the Parliamentary Private Secretary becomes so involved in the work of other Departments, his freedom thereby becomes limited. In his own interests he should see that the scope of his activity does not range too widely over fields

with which he is not immediately connected. If the position is as the hon. Member suggests, which means that the Parliamentary Private Secretary is tied to the team as a whole, I suggest that the argument of the Report is sound, that we are getting too large a body of people who are tied to the team, and that we ought to reduce the number. I believe that the suggestion I make is the better one, that it makes for the better education of the Member of Parliament and preserves the freedom he ought to enjoy in relation to the great mass of Parliamentary work. I have referred to the only two subjects I wished to raise, and I end, as I began, by thanking the Committee for guiding us and giving us this exceedingly valuable Report. I shall look forward to the resulting legislation.

Mr. A. Bevan: There are two subjects upon which Members of this House can be depended upon to be unusually sententious; one is education and the other is the Constitution. I do not think it is necessary to spend a very great deal of time in discussing the past in this matter, because what we really ought to face at the moment are the difficulties of the existing situation, having regard to the principles of representative government as we practise them. I think the Report we have had is a wholly admirable Report, one of the best reports that I have ever seen coming from a Select Committee, and it is so clear that it is hardly necessary to spend any time on explaining what the Report itself explains so admirably, far better than one can be expected to do in the course of an extempore speech. I only propose to address myself very briefly to the first part of the scheme proposed by the. Select Committee, which has reference to the permanent position. That is quite clear. I do not think anyone will quarrel with it, and I hope the Government will find it possible to introduce legislation giving effect to it. What we are particularly interested in, however, are the modifications of the permanent scheme suggested by emergency conditions, because it is the departure from a normal set of circumstances which has given rise to this in the first instance. It seems to me that there is likely to be some confusion about this particular aspect of it. First, at what point does an emergency arise? Because it is an emergency which is likely to set up a series of practices which militate


against the independence of this House. I think it is quite clear as to what is to happen to the existing Act of 1941. The Chairman of the Select Committee made that quite clear when he said that that Act is being renewed from year to year and that the Committee recommend that the same procedure should be followed in the future. In fact, therefore, Parliament at the moment retains complete control over the extent and the duration of the departure from the scheme. That is quite clear, and I hope that when the Government bring the Bill in they will accept that part of the Committee's recommendations, because it is very important.
On the other hand, I do not think the Committee are quite clear as to what is to happen in the case of a future emergency. Let us look at paragraph 83:
Your Committee are therefore of the opinion that the continuation in force of the Ministers of the Crown (Emergency Appointments) Act, 1939, in its present form is undesirable.
We are not particularly concerned with that Act in these recommendations, but we are very much concerned about the Act of 1941, the Emergency Appointments (Disqualification) Act. They say:
They recommend that the Act should be amended by some definite provision for its expiring not later than the termination of the present emergency, and for the limit on the number of Ministers permitted to be Members of the House of Commons becoming effective on the expiry of the Act.
It is this matter of the future emergency to which I wish to call attention. I may be misunderstanding the Committee's recommendations, and again I say I am in no difficulty with regard to the present emergency, because Parliament has to renew the Act year by year and retains full control, but where a future emergency arises it would be impossible, unless we are protected against it, for one Act to declare the emergency and then for the emergency to exist indefinitely until an Act of the Executive ended it. In the first part of the scheme, therefore, it would be necessary to put in, if possible, that an emergency under which the permanent scheme would be modified should be declared by the House, such declaration to be renewed annually so as to safeguard the permanent position in the same way as at present.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: The hon. Gentleman has insisted on this House retaining control as regards the

emergency scheme, but surely at the present time the House with its present powers has the right at any moment to refuse the passage of any Bill which did not include the very powers he wishes to have included in it. As I understand his argument, I do not see that we can do that, because any dictation as to what this House should do at any particular moment would limit the powers of this House in refusing or accepting any Bill put before it.

Mr. Bevan: I think the hon. Member misunderstands the procedure. What happens is this: We will assume that the present emergency has come to an end and therefore that there are no departures from the permanent scheme recommended by the Committee. Then a new emergency arises, and emergency legislation is passed. That emergency legislation would provide for modifications of the permanent scheme; in other words, it would provide for a larger number of Members to hold paid offices under the Crown.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: And that emergency legislation would be subject to the vote of the House.

Mr. Bevan: As I have already pointed out, having passed that one Act, having declared the emergency which would include the right to modify the scheme, the emergency then does not come to an end until the Government come to the House and ask the House to declare that it is at an end. Now does the hon. Member understand? At the moment, we have control over the situation, because we have to renew last year's Act every year, and if we do not renew it, the permanent scheme automatically comes into operation. But, once this emergency is over and the Act of 1941 comes to an automatic end, the permanent scheme makes no provision for the annual renewal of emergency powers.

Sir D. Herbert: If the hon. Member would allow me to interrupt, there is no automatic method of bringing back this legislation into operation by declaration of an emergency. If it had been so, we should undoubtedly have dealt with it, because the hon. Member will observe that we have specially dealt with the provisions under which certain powers are to arise or to be in existence during the continuance of any war, and that is the only possible thing of that kind which might


happen. We have dealt with that and have made our recommendations.

Mr. Bevan: I think the right hon. Gentleman has in substance confirmed the main point I was trying to make. I was not merely dealing with the Select Committee's Report, but I was trying to influence the nature of the legislation which may be based upon it. Might I suggest that there is no reason at all why the House should not have automatic control over the emergency for this purpose?

Mr. Pickthorn: Do you mean over the next emergency?

Mr. Bevan: Certainly.

Mr. Pickthorn: Then the emergency legislation will be governed by the emergency when it arises.

Mr. Bevan: We are dealing with a point which is very important to the House. It is very undesirable that the Government should have more Members of the House directly dependent upon them than they will have under the permanent scheme. That is the first point; but the Government begin to get many more Members under their control once that scheme has been modified by an emergency situation. There is a sensible growth at once, because once a Government begins to appoint additional Members of the House it begins to get more control over the House, and so long as that emergency situation exists the Government will be able afterwards to add indefinitely to the numbers of Members of the House who are holding Offices of Profit under the Crown. I therefore ask—I am not being dogmatic—whether it is impossible for the permanent scheme to contain the provision that where the Government declare an emergency, and by a declaration of emergency or by emergency legislation have the power to appoint more Offices of Profit under the Crown than in the permanent scheme, the power so to do shall be annually renewed by the House of Commons. There is no reason at all why that cannot be done. All that it would do would be to make a permanent feature of this scheme what is the position now temporarily, because at the moment we have the right to refuse the renewal of last year's Act under which the additional Offices of Profit are continued. There is no reason, it seems to me, why this can-

not be incorporated in the permanent scheme.
That is the one main point I wish to make for the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman when he brings the Bill before the House. Let me suggest to him that it will not be sufficient to follow the suggestion of the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Orr-Ewing) that it would depend upon the emergency legislation at that time. That would not be sufficient, because we should pass one Act on that one day in an emergency in the atmosphere of emergency and then give the Government power to make these appointments quite indefinitely until the Government themselves, on their own initiative, asked the House of Commons to discontinue their power to do so. That is a very great mistake. The power to bring these powers to an end should be in the House of Commons, and on the initiative of the House, and not on the initiative of the Executive.
I wish to make one observation on what has fallen from one hon. Member in relation to the position of Parliamentary Private Secretaries in this House. I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary myself for a very short time—I am afraid a very unsatisfactory one. It was to my own leader at the time he was not a member of the Government. It was the only time when I had had official smiles bestowed on me at all. It is perfectly clear that the Committee has properly interpreted the position of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and I though: that the hon. Member made a mistake in using the word "independence" too often. All Members are independent, including members of the Government. They can always, without having the danger of having their heads chopped off, disagree and resign. What we are seeking is to prevent certain disabilities being placed upon Members so that in disagreeing with the Government they also have to surrender certain other things. That is what we really mean by independence, that a man should be able to exercise the freedom and right of criticism in the House without incurring any additional disabilities, to those involved in the issue itself. The difficulty of a Parliamentary Private Secretary is that once he becomes attached to the Government he takes a proprietorial interest in the Government; he begins, to obtain certain privileges, access to certain documents, as my hon. Friend pointed out.


Indeed I have found some Parliamentary Private Secretaries to be much more angry at any opposition to the Government even than the Ministers themselves. Some of my friends with whom I was on very friendly terms before they became Parliamentary Private Secretaries now turn a basilisk eye on me. It is all very well for the hon. Member to say that a Parliamentary Private Secretary, while loyal to his own chief, can quarrel with the rest of the Government. I have known one or two Parliamentary Private Secretaries, who shall be nameless, who appeared to think they served their own chiefs best by denigrating their chiefs colleagues. That creates an unhappy, unhealthy situation in the Government. The Parliamentary Private Secretary, having access to the secret information, can do great harm to the Government if loyalty to his chief is in excess of his loyalty to the Government. That cannot be done.
Again, the Parliamentary Private Secretary cannot expect to enjoy the best of both worlds. He cannot expect to go into the Opposition Lobby when he likes and still bask in the sunshine of official benediction. I am not certain whether it was Mr. Masterman or another of the old Liberal Ministers who said to a Parliamentary Private Secretary who had been exercising his right to vote against the Government rather frequently, "I do not mind if you sometimes speak against the Government in the House; I do not mind if you sometimes vote against the Government in the Division Lobby; but there ought to be occasions on which you support the Government." It seems it is an impossible situation. Surely what has happened in this House is that there are far too many Parliamentary Private Secretaries. Every tin-pot Minister gets his Parliamentary Private Secretary. Surely the Prime Minister ought to frown upon any Minister in a subordinate position having a Parliamentary Private Secretary. That is what we should get to. The only way we could do it is by making it quite clear to Parliamentary Private Secretaries that when they do accept these appointments certain disabilities accompany them and we regard them as being in the Government's entourage, although we know at the same time they have no effective voice over policy.
I am very glad that the House of Commons is particularly jealous of this matter.

I think the way it has handled it is to the credit of the House, because if Members will notice how many Members of this House are now under the direct control of the Government in some form or other, they will appreciate how difficult it is for the House to exercise effective criticism of the Government. One of the reasons many mistakes have been made in the past is because the Government have far too large an army on the back benches of this House—something like 160 to 180 Members under the direct control of the Executive, a phalanx of support against which the critics rail in vain. It is always necessary not only that the Government should be powerful, but that the critics should be powerful if representative government is to continue in wholesome fashion.

Major Sir George Davies: It is rather interesting to observe the way in which this Debate has developed. The particular thing which seems to have taken up the most time and discussion is a subject which strictly speaking was outside the terms of reference of the Select Committee, because whatever is the position of a Parliamentary Private Secretary it is not an Office of Profit under the Crown. It was included in the general remarks of my right hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means in opening this Debate, in which he said that they gave attention to things which were directly ancillary to the important subject they were considering. Two questions came under this heading, one of which has not been touched upon at all, and I do not want to drag it into the Debate as a red herring. That was the question of justices of the peace. The other was the question of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. It was obvious, from the start of our consideration, that what really concerned us was the maintenance of the true independence of Parliament. We found, on going into the very interesting but very chaotic history of this matter, that in the early days the outstanding consideration which had weighed with Parliament was to preserve the independence of the Members of this House from possible encroachment by the Crown, which later developed into the question of possible encroachment by the Executive. Under that head, comes the question of the position of the Parliamentary Private Secretary. It is quite useless to suggest what Parliamentary Private


Secretaries should not be or do. What we were faced with is what they actually are or do to-day. There is no question that this is a potential means of the Executive more and more getting control over the complete independence of Members of this House. You can see an example when what is humourously called a free vote comes along. When it is known that practically all the Members of the Government Front Bench are going to vote one way, you know that practically all the Members of the bench—now empty—just behind the Front Bench is going to vote the same way.
We were considering whether this was an evil, whether it was a growing evil, and whether we could make recommendations to clip its wings. While it is not exactly an evil, it is obviously undesirable. A Parliamentary Private Secretary to-day is generally a younger Member who shows promise of developing into good timber to use for the formation of a Government. He is given a trial. The more useful he becomes in that job, the wider becomes his influence. He has access to what are, to the rest of us, secret papers. He gets information outside his particular Ministry and opportunities of showing whether he is a potential source of usefulness and strength to the Government. Side by side with that, there must be an increasing identification of himself with the Government machine. As has been pointed out, you cannot check that by saying what a Parliamentary Private Secretary must or must not do. It would seem that the only possible way is to try somehow to limit the numbers of what are called official Parliamentary Private Secretaries. There is, of course, nothing to prevent a junior Minister asking somebody to fetch and carry for him, but that is not the same thing. Our recommendation was that the line should be adopted of, in some way, reducing the numbers.
In general, I think that all of us who had the pleasure of listening to the speech which introduced this Motion will agree that we could not have had a better Chairman of our Committee. We found the work extremely interesting. It developed along lines that we had not considered probable, such as the matter of the King's Printer and of the Provost of Eton. For myself, I found it intensely interesting sometimes because—I am not giving away any secrets—I found myself

in a very small minority. It has been said that
East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
and that left is left and right is right, and never the twain shall meet. But my solitude was relieved by the company of the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), who backed me up in my minority position except on one occasion, when I was left alone. That was a very interesting occasion, and the Chairman of the Committee has withdrawn the recommendation that was made. That is by the way. It was considered desirable that a Committee should be set up to go into the law and practice of this matter. If the action suggested in our Report is taken, it will not be necessary to dig back into the archives to find out what Parliament really meant in respect of certain legislation. This will be the datum line of approach in these matters, whether for future emergencies or on the question of the normal procedure of the House in these matters. It will preserve the old methods and traditions; it will be in conformity with good sense—which is, after all, the over-ruling consideration—and I believe that if the Government bring in a Bill to implement our recommendations, a very definite advance will be made in a matter which in some respects is of secondary importance, but which in many respects demands attention.

Dr. Haden Guest: I agree with everyone who has spoken as to the very great value of this Report, and I concur in the recommendations. It seems to me that the Committee have produced a document of great historical importance. It is a most interesting historical survey. It is extremely gratifying that the information has been collected now, because some of it might not have been available in a few years' time. This historical survey, dealing with the important subject of the preservation of the independence of Parliament, is a great addition to the constitutional history of Parliament. But I think—I speak subject to correction—the Committee did not include any Member particularly concerned with the interests of science or of any scientific profession, and it has perhaps not paid attention to some aspects of future developments which I think merit attention from the point of view of the Bill


which I hope will shortly be presented to the House.
I draw attention to the growing importance, recognised in the country as a whole and by the scientific professions, of what are called the social relations and social responsibilities of science. It is a fact that scientific men, such as a distinguished Member who represents Cambridge University in this House, have a way of being attached to universities or research organisations, such as agricultural research, medical research and so forth, which receives, directly or indirectly, Government subventions which make them, from the technical point of view, the holders of Office of Profit under the Crown. It Members will turn to the list of the special arrangements which have been made so that they may be able to sit in the House, they will see that special arrangements have had to be made for the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University (Professor A. V. Hill), who is Secretary of the Royal Society among other things, because he is technically holding an Office of Profit under the Crown in virtue of his membership of certain scientific committees. Offices of that kind might very easily be brought under the heading of what the right hon. Gentleman, who so lucidly and interestingly introduced this subject, called innocent offices. The man who is engaged on medical research in regard to vitamins, the engineer who is engaged on technical research, the chemist, and the physicist engaged on researches into the atom or other intricate matters of that kind, are not receiving emoluments which are influencing their political conduct.
Some provision ought to be made to see that the choice of possible Members is not narrowed too much by excluding those who are among the best qualified people in the country from being Members of the House of Commons. There is also the possibility, with the developments in our social life as they are going on at present, that certain of the large industries of the country may be brought under Government control, and certain of the great professions, even possibly the legal profession, and very possibly indeed, the medical profession, may be brought under Government control and receive Government emoluments even to a greater extent than they do at present. We might have such a position brought about that so

many people were holding technically Offices of Profit under the Crown that a great many lawyers, as indeed is the fact in present circumstances, and members of the medical profession would be prevented from standing as candidates or being Members of Parliament while holding certain offices. That would be a pity and a very serious disadvantage to the life of the country.

Mr. Maxton: Would the hon. Member suggest that medical men and scientists who were working full-time in the public service should be prevented definitely from sitting in this House?

Dr. Guest: The people who are working full-time in any employment are probably incapacitated from being Members of Parliament by the fact that they are working full time. What I want to be safeguarded in the Bill is that the man or woman who is not working full-time, but only part-time, should not be disqualified. The other day, in order to show how far this question of Offices of Profit under the Crown extends, I gave an example from my own experience in the last two or three weeks. I was endeavouring to find a way by which I could get payment for a motor car to take me from this House to one of the large camps where I could deliver a lecture to the Army Education Department. If I accepted a fee for the purpose, it would be an Office of Profit under the Crown and would exclude me from sitting as a Member of Parliament, although its only object was to enable me to pay a taxicab fare. Therefore, it is not only a question of people working full-time. A man might be in receipt of a very small emolument or even no emolument, as shown in the case of an hon. Member who sits on these benches. It will be remembered that a few weeks ago we had to pass a special Arthur Jenkins Indemnity Bill. One wants to safeguard the working of the Act which the House will be asked to pass, and, particularly, to see that it does not prevent the electors from having the possibility of choosing men of scientific or legal eminence who are not in effect in such a relation to the Crown as to prevent them from being really and truly independent Members of the House.
At the present time certain organisations like the British Council, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and other


bodies are receiving very considerable Government subventions, but do not come, for some mysterious reason, under the heading of Offices of Profit under the Crown. Before the Bill is finally passed a good deal of attention will have to be paid to that aspect of the matter, in order that, on the one hand, offices which are really Offices of Profit under the Crown are fully listed and made incompatible with membership of the House and, on the other hand, that scientific persons and members of the learned professions generally shall not be disfranchised from the possibility of being members merely by the fact that some of the money which they receive comes from a Government source. That is the important aspect of the matter from the point of view of the future of Parliament and especially of the growing sense of the social responsibilities and duties of the scientific professions given expression by the Royal Society, the British Association and other representative bodies. The sciences have a great contribution to make to the public life of this country, and I hope that the Bill will not make it difficult for them to get in the House of Commons.

The Minister without Portfolio (Mr. Arthur Greenwood): I would like to express the satisfaction which I think all Members of the House feel with the excellent report which has been submitted by my right hon. Friend. I do not propose to go into any details at this stage, but I share the view of my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee that the stages of the Bill will provide that proper opportunity. The Government desired this Debate to-day in order that there should be an opportunity of His Majesty's Government learning the views of Members of the House. We have given some thought to the problems arising out of the recommendations, and we have arrived at certain provisional conclusions, and it seemed right, before we put the Bill before the House, that we should take the opportunity of collecting the voices in the Chamber to-day.
I would say, as to Part II, that we have proceeded very far, and later we shall resume our consideration of Part I with a view to the necessary legislation to which my right hon. Friend referred. As to Part II, there, as the House now realises, legislation is necessary almost immediately—within a month. Although we

have given some thought to the questions involved and to what has been said in the House, they will have to be carefully considered by the Government before the Bill is brought before the House. The suggestion that the House of Commons Disqualification (Temporary Provisions) Act should be continued for a further period is reasonable, and I am glad to know that hon. Members did not make the suggestion that it should come under the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, as there would be no opportunity for amendment, which might be desirable in the light of experience. We accept the suggestion that the Act should be continued for another year.
A further proposal is that a certificate issued with regard to a Member should contain a statement that it is desirable that the Member should continue to be a Member of the House. I hope the Select Committee will not insist upon that particular provision. I think we ought to realise that the First Lord of the Treasury has sufficient burdens to bear without adding this particular one. I have consulted my colleagues on this problem, and we thought that that provision should not be insisted upon by the House. I should like to support the statement made by the Chairman of the Select Committee—that it would be well not to take account of a proposal that the certificate should be announced from the Chair by Mr. Speaker. I think that when my right hon. Friend made that proposal it was received with approval by the House, and the Government would propose now to take that line. The suggestion was made about limiting the number of certificates. The Government will be quite prepared to put in a reasonable figure so that the House shall be protected from these hordes of people who, it has been said, might get these special privileges.
Lastly, there was a suggestion for limiting exemption from disqualification to some stated period of time unless extended in any particular case by Order-in-Council or by Resolution of the House. I suggest, with all respect, that that Procedure might involve the Government and the House in some embarrassment. If you have a Resolution before the House dealing with the expiry of a particular certificate and there is a Debate on the action of a public servant, it may well be that such Debate would be most deplorable and unfortunate and not in the public interest, and I hope,


therefore, that the House will give consideration to that point. The Ministers of the Crown (Emergency Appointments) Act does not contain a provision limiting its duration. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), who has, naturally, a very suspicious mind, seemed to suggest that in some future emergency the Government would put an Act on the Statute Book and keep it there. Let me say that in the case of the House of Commons Disqualification (Temporary Provisions) Act it was not limited in time but in the forthcoming Act we are prepared to put the Act on a temporary basis.
I have announced that the Ministers of the Crown (Emergency Appointments) Act should be in existence only during the present emergency and that it should then come to an end. It would, however, be difficult to fix a time now as to when that emergency will end, because emergencies end at different times for different purposes, as the House will clearly understand. That is all I would say in the light of the discussions on the Bill which will shortly come before the House. After the discussions we will continue our own consideration of Part I of the Report with a view to the introduction of legislation at a convenient time.

Sir D. Herbert: I was not quite pleased with the expression the Minister used with regard to consideration of the proposals of Part I of the Bill. I asked that the Government might give instructions to Treasury counsel to draft the Bill as soon as possible so that the matter could be considered further. I only want to put this point. So many difficulties will arise in regard to the drafting of the Bill that I think the Government will find it hard to give that consideration, which I should wish, to the detailed proposals that will follow unless and until they get them in the form of draft legislation. My suggestion is that although no Bill should be printed or published at the present time, there should be a Treasury counsel's draft of the Bill for the purpose of the Government's further consideration.

Mr. Greenwood: On the whole I think that is a matter of method. Final consideration will have to be on the basis of the Bill. It may well be that Treasury counsel may not at the moment be able to proceed with the details of the Bill, but Ministers could in the interval give further

study to the recommendations in Part I of the Report.

Mr. Pickthorn: I am sorry to detain the House, but with regard to the point my right hon. Friend made about the form of certificate, there may be some of us who are not prepared to accept the advice offered to-day, and I would, in advance, suggest this consideration to the Minister. It had been understood by a great many people hitherto that the form of certificate already used does, indeed, contain the notation, which is here suggested might be made a little more express, but from the words which he used to-day it rather appears that the opposite view is taken by the Government. If so, then I think the gentlemen who are beneficiaries by these certificates are placed in a highly invidious position.

Mr. Mander: I must say that I am very disappointed with the speech made by the Minister without Portfolio, because he has gone very far to express the Government's unwilingness to accept the proposals of the Select Committee in respect of Part II. The point I want to make is that the recommendations or suggestions made were of an exceedingly moderate kind. The word "suggestion" was used so as to make it as easy as possible for the Government to accept them, and we only embodied proposals which we thought the Government might reasonably accept. That was the specific reason for the proposals. Some members of the Committee held quite different views, and I moved an Amendment which is an indication of the views that some members held. It is referred to in the Report in these terms:
Some hold the view that no certificate issued under the Act should be effective until an affirmative resolution has been passed by both Houses of Parliament and that the seat of the Member in question should be vacated, though he would be eligible for re-election. These provisions would give some safeguard both to the House of Commons and to the electors. In normal circumstances no doubt in both cases formal approval would be given to the appointment, but the provisions might none the less be a useful recognition of the rights of Parliament and the Constituencies. Others feel that it would be more in accordance with Parliamentary tradition and with the dignity of the House of Commons if the House itself were to give leave of absence to a Member whose services are required by the Government in any period of national emergency.
Because we wanted to come to an agreed decision, those who held the views thus


expressed did not press them; but there are some hon. Members who feel very strongly that something very much more drastic would be reasonable in the public interest. It is for this reason that I am disappointed when the Minister, referring to one after another of the modest and reasonable suggestions that have been made, says that he hopes they will not be pressed, and that the Government cannot accept them. I quite agree with the point about Mr. Speaker, but the alternatives that have been mentioned, such as a statement by the Prime Minister, would go a very long way towards meeting the views of members of the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman said that it was not reasonable to press the point about the certificate being altered so as to state that the public interest requires that the Member should retain his seat. I think the House as a whole attached very great importance to this matter. Our view is that when an hon. Member is appointed to a position overseas, the Prime Minister should issue a certificate stating not only that is it desirable for the hon. Member to hold that appointment, but that it is desirable for him also to remain a Member of the House. It may be that the Prime Minister would find some difficulty in giving a certificate of that sort, but the fact of that being so does not meet the point we have made. I hope the Government will not close their minds to these proposals.
The Minister said, again, that he did not think it would be reasonable to ask the Government to accept a stated period of time because that might give rise to discussion that would be unpleasant. But all sorts of discussions which take place in the House are controversial, and the question of sending hon. Members overseas and allowing them at the same time to retain their Membership of the House might be felt, in certain cases, to be very controversial and undesirable; and in those cases the House ought to have an opportunity of discussing the matter and stating their views, and not simply be told that it is much better to draw a veil over such things. I hope the Minister will take into consideration the views I have expressed, which certainly represent the views of the Committee, as they are to be found in the Committee's unanimous recommendations.
With regard to Parliamentary Private Secretaries, I want to ask when the Government propose to make a statement concerning the suggestion, in the report which do not require legislation, such as resolutions, new standing orders and conventions. I know that some hon. Members look with favour upon the appointment of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I will not inquire too deeply into that. There are also very strong arguments against these appointments. It is true that in some cases it may be desirable for both the Minister and the Under-Secretary to have Parliamentary Private Secretaries when the Department they represent is a very busy one. In this matter there can be no rigid rule, but in some cases there is no necessity for the Under-Secretary to have a Parliamentary Private Secretary, and in fact, a number of Under-Secretaries do not find it necessary to have them. I want the Government to give some sort of lead in this matter. Of course, Parliamentary Private Secretaries vary a great deal. Some of them can do work of the very greatest importance. They can be looked upon almost as Ministers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has a high-powered and eminent Parliamentary Private Secretary who is almost regarded as superior to the Chancellor, on occasions. Seriously, the Chancellor's Parliamentary Private Secretary is a very good one. The whole thing depends upon the Department, the officials there, the Minister, and the Parliamentary Private Secretary himself. However, I hope that some principle will be laid down that will limit severely the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries unless they are absolutely necessary.

Mr. Charles Williams: I had no intention of taking part in this Debate, but I must confess that the Minister's reply left me a little unhappy about the position. There is very deep feeling in the House on the subject of the ever-growing amount of Government patronage. It was for that reason that the Committee was set up. I was a member of the Committee, and I should like to say that if there was anything that was evident throughout the whole of the proceedings of the Committee, it was the amazing industry and ability of my right hon. Friend who presided over the meetings. I should like the Patronage Secretary to realise that the Government would be very well advised, before bringing in the


Bill, to go rather nearer to the point of view held by the Chairman of the Committee, and to have some form of very close consultation between the Minister and the Chairman of the Committee. I think this would be advisable in the public interest and from the point of view of the facility with which an agreed Bill might be passed through the House. I feel it is essential that the Government should realise that in all quarters of the House there is a considerable amount of feeling on this very important matter.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I should like to add what weight my support has to the argument made by the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) on the subject of the contents of the certificate and his insistence on the value of the inclusion in the certificate of a statement that continued Membership of the House is considered essential. I feel that that particular issue was rather glossed over by the Minister. I do not think the House can lay too much emphasis upon the value of the inclusion in the certificate of some such undertaking.
There is one other minor point to which I want to refer, although I am not sure whether I am justified in speaking on it. It concerns the position of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I am one of that downtrodden class, and having been one for some six or seven years, I may be a little more downtrodden than some others. At the present time, as a result of the heavy work in every Department, the position of Parliamentary Private Secretaries is an extremely difficult one. It has been suggested that their numbers should be limited, but I do not think that suggestion would really meet the true problem. The argument used, both in the House and in the Report, seems to be based on the assumption that a private Member, when he becomes a Parliamentary Private Secretary, forfeits all his independence and future course of action, and adopts a servile attitude to the Minister he has the honour to serve and refuses to allow himself to consider going into an opposite Lobby. That, of course, is a ridiculous argument, because, if he does not find himself able to follow his Minister into the same Lobby, it is always open to him to resign, in which case he loses no emoluments but merely releases himself from a great deal of heavy work. I think that the real cause

of the trouble lies in the fact that so many Ministers attempt to translate their Parliamentary Private Secretaries into junior Ministers.
I should like two essentials in regard to the appointment of Parliamentary Private Secretaries made perfectly clear in some statement to the House. I believe that such a statement would help Parliamentary Private Secretaries, the House and, possibly, the public, because there is still the misunderstanding abroad that when a Parliamentary Private Secretary speaks he speaks on behalf of a Government Department. The first statement which I should like made would be to point out that secret documents remain secret from a Parliamentary Private Secretary. At one time, I think it was shortly before the beginning of this war, there was reason to remind Ministers of the fact that their Parliamentary Private Secretaries should not have access to all the documents which a Minister has to study, and I believe it is fully time that a further reminder was given on the subject. Secondly, I believe that the position would be very much better if it were made known in this House that a Parliamentary Private Secretary's job was to act as a liaison between this House and his Minister and Department, that there his functions ceased and that he was not a junior Minister and had none of the rights of a junior Minister to peruse documents. It might be argued that the work of a Department and of a Minister would suffer because they would not receive the same assistance, but, if that is the case, and I do not accept it as being the case, it is an argument for adding to the number of junior Ministers. We cannot allow bogus Ministers to be appointed in the form of fairy-like Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I believe that the position would be much better if these statements were made.

Mr. Maxton: I do not rise to take part in the discussion about Parliamentary Private Secretaries. I hope that I preserved the proper serenity and soberness of demeanour when the Committee discussed this matter. A Parliamentary Private Secretary has been a matter of humour. Gilbert wrote:
But the privilege and pleasure
That we treasure, beyond measure
Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.


There is a certain type who like doing it, and we do not object to their doing it. I was never so alarmed about the evil effects that they might have on Parliamentary institutions as a number of my colleagues on the Select Committee, because I consider that they can go on normally, just like a back bencher, supporting their Government so long as it is going well. When the Government begins to get in the doldrums and people begin to look around for a way of going while the going is still good, I am quite sure that in the rush the Parliamentary Private Secretaries will not be left behind.
I rise to my feet because, as a Member of the Committee, a hard-working Member of that Committee, and as one who appreciates the work of my colleague, the Chairman who presented the report referred to an amendment of mine which was defeated. I accepted the defeat and worked loyally with my colleagues for the production of the Report. The general line of my amendment was that we should not recommend legislation on this matter, but that we should simply concern ourselves with stating historical facts. We should not make recommendations for legislation which could be left for a later period. The right hon. Gentleman informed the House that that amendment was defeated. It was carried by, I forgot how many votes, to one, that we should recommend legislation. However, I think that my colleagues in the Committee will be inclined to agree with me now they have heard the statement of the Government's intentions with reference to the Report. I am the "one," and the Government have accepted my recommendation for no legislation, thereby rejecting the proposal of the Committee that legislation should be proceeded with. It was very difficult to follow precisely what the Minister without Portfolio promised in the way of legislation, but, whatever it was, it seemed to me to be the very minimum. I see that the right hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) is described in the Press as the Leader of the Official Opposition—an office of profit, but not under the Crown.
The right hon. Gentleman, in his speech to-day, glorified the conservatism of Great Britain, and seemed to go on the assumption that this war would come to the normal conclusion of all wars, namely, a

resounding British victory, and that all things would return to their different places again, the House of Commons and the House of Lords would go on just as before, and that we should all genuflect to the altar in the corner. Frankly, I cannot, with the world-shaking things that are happening just now, take that easy view. The reason why I thought it was a bit futile to propose legislation on these minor matters during the war, is that probably by the time you are seeing your way to an emergence from the present world conflict, fundamental changes will be taking place which people had not contemplated when the thing started, and those fundamental changes will probably take place in the Governmental methods of the country as well.
The raison d'étre for the appointment of the Committee was the sending of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. M. MacDonald) to be High Commissioner in Canada. That started the whole controversy. It was a preposterous act, examined from every constitutional point of view, to send a Member of this House several thousand miles away to a paid non-political post. I understood and sympathised with the Prime Minister's difficulties and I had some admiration for the ingenuity of the device that he produced to solve his immediate difficulty, but from the point of view of the Constitution it was preposterous and indefensible. When I have said that, and when I have noted the appointment of Members of this House to Ambassadorial positions in Moscow, Washington, and Madrid, while some of them retained membership of the House; while I note the appointment of an hon. and learned Gentleman to control the vegetable market, a thing which normally we should regard as completely out of keeping with the traditions of Parliament, I am prepared to say that by the time we emerge from this war we may have come to the conclusion that our old way of maintaining relations with foreign countries through professional Ambassadors and the Diplomatic and Consular services is completely out of date.
It might, conceivably, be agreed by Parliament that a more direct relation between the Parliament of this country and the Congress of the United States and the Central Committee of the Soviet Republic is desirable and, in the new world which has to be met and dealt with, it may be


that the legislative or governing assemblies of the various nations of the world will find it absolutely necessary to maintain permanent contacts by the interchange of representatives. I certainly cannot see you going through this war without your Dominions being definitely associated with the Imperial Government in a way they have never been before. Indeed, it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the Dominions may find it more acceptable to associate themselves with the United States than with the British Government and House of Commons. I made a jesting reference to an hon. and learned Member controlling vegetables. One would have said, normally, that that was just fantastic, and under the traditions of the House of Commons it is fantastic. But to what extent will the nation be involved in industry and in the control of the material necessities of the people before we emerge from this war? It might be most desirable to have a meat controller, a poultry controller, and a butter controller, all sitting in the House.
Further, I put this point, which has given me a tremendous lot of thought. The whole of the discussions of the Committee and of the House to-day are made on the assumption that after the war we shall make peace treaties in the normal way and that we shall all go back to our old Parliamentary systems or autocracies, or whatever we had before the war. I see that we have the first autocrat back on his throne quite safely as a result of the struggle for democracy. The Emperor of Ethiopia sits enthroned with the full assent of the British House of Commons—which the Prime Minister told me to-day has not been asked—maintaining his old position and he has given some promise that, perhaps, when he finds it suitable, he will abolish slavery. I am not resenting the cash. I would not mind paying £1,000,000 or £2,000,000 if I thought I was going to get something like democracy and freedom for the people. But I do not make the assumption that things are going to return to their former state like that. It may be that this House of Commons will have to take a day-to-day responsibility for administering economic and social things in a way they have never done before. We make the assumption—it has been implicit right through—that we are going to return to a Parliamentary system in which there is a Government and an

Opposition and that we are going to have the same good old system of "ins" and "outs."
I am inclined to think, looking at the relationship of my hon. Friends above the Gangway and the people across the Floor, and the way in which Labour, Conservative and Liberal are all sitting cheek by jowl, and how it has now become a tremendous offence to vote against them on any occasion, that the essentials of the House of Commons—a Government side and an Opposition side—are gone. The question that must arise is whether they are gone for good or only temporarily. If they are to be resumed, what will be the basis of difference? What fundamental principle will separate one side from the other, because if you are not going to have a real dividing principle, do not let us maintain the farce, the facade, of disagreement where there is none. If we are to have something in the nature of a totalitarian, authoritarian State, let us say so. Do not let us have authoritarianism and totalitarianism by defeat.
Those are the thoughts in my mind which made me feel that to propose legislation at this juncture on these relatively minor points is not meeting the situation according to the size of the situation itself. My colleagues on the Committee must feel a certain measure of resentment that, after all their toil, the Government say, "Thank you very much. We appreciate your efforts very highly. We like your pamphlet—it runs to so many pages—and you are a lot of nice fellows but we are going to do as little about it as we possibly can." My colleagues who formed the majority of this Committee hoped at least that if they made moderate proposals for legislation the Government would accept them and perhaps add one or two more of their own. That has not been the attitude of the Government. The Government refused legislation for reasons which seemed good to them, and I, for one, look forward to a time in the near future when this ground we have covered will have to be covered again, with bigger and more world-shaking considerations in our minds than those which were present when we produced this Report.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House recommends the Report from the Select Committee, on Offices or Places of Profit under the Crown to the consideration of His Majesty's Government.

NATIONAL EXPENDITURE.

Sir John Wardlaw-Milne: I beg to move,
That the Special Report from the Select Committee on National Expenditure be now considered.

Sir Percy Harris: I beg to second the Motion.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Clifton Brown): I suggest that we take this Motion as formal and have the discussion on the Motion which embodies the Committee's recommendations.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: May I ask your guidance, Mr. Deputy-Speaker? I understand that I should move the first paragraph of the Motion, and that we should have a general discussion, if it is desired, on all the recommendations.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Perhaps the hon. Member will move the whole Motion, and the Chair will put it paragraph by paragraph.

Mr. Garro Jones: May I suggest that a general discussion should take place on the whole Motion and that, if no satisfactory answers have been given to points raised, there should be a right reserved to hon. Members when each paragraph is put to raise points which have been omitted during the general discussion?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is really my intention. The general discussion will take place on the first paragraph. Hon Members will have the right, as the other paragraphs are put, to raise questions on those paragraphs if they have not been satisfied during the general Debate.

Question put, and agreed to.

Special Report considered accordingly.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: I beg to move,
That the Select Committee on National Expenditure have power to appoint a Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to review, co-ordinate and direct the work of the investigating Sub-Committees, and to refer to such Sub-Committee any of the matters referrred to the Committee.
That the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee so appointed shall have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; and to adjourn from place to place; and shall report any evidence taken by them to the Committee.
That the Committee have power to give such Co-ordinating Sub-Committee power to alter

the order of reference of any Sub-Committee, to appoint such further Sub-Committees as may seem to them desirable and to refer to such Sub-Committees any of the matters referred to the Committee, to nominate Members of the Committee for service on any Sub-Committee, to appoint the Chairman of any Sub-Committee, to discharge the members of any Sub-Committee and to appoint others in substitution for those discharged: Provided that any action taken by the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee in the exercise of any of the powers referred to in this Order shall be invalid unless approved by the Committee within twenty-one days.
That where the Committee have nominated any Members of the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to serve also as additional Members of all other Sub-Committees, the number of such additional Members shall not be taken into account for the purpose of determining the quorum of any Sub-Committee, nor shall any such additional Members be counted for the purpose of establishing the presence of a quorum at any meeting of a Sub-Committee.
That when two Sub-Committees sit jointly they shall constitute a single Sub-Committee whose quorum shall be one-third (any fraction counting as a whole number) of the total number of persons (exclusive of additional members) who are either Members of both Sub-Committees or Members of one or other Sub-Committee only.
The Special Report which the Select Committee brings before the House gives clearly the reasons for the Motion which I have moved. I do not want to go over all the matters set out in this Report, because, to the best of our ability, we have set them out clearly. It may be desirable, however, to say that it has been made clear during the work of the Select Committee for two years that certain changes in procedure would be desirable to enable the Committee to carry out, in the best possible manner, the duties which the House has placed upon it. The Committee originally set up, under the powers conferred by the House, a number of subcommittees, each of which was attached to a spending Department of State. For example, we had a committee connected with the Army, another dealing with the naval services, a third dealing with aircraft construction and the work of the Air Force, and so on. But it became clear as time went on, that certain operations carried on by the Government in war are of what we call a horizontal character, that is to say, they cover many Departments and yet are all very much of the same type. In Clause 2 we give examples of that:
the economic use of labour and the construction of new works may be cited.
Those are very good examples of the kind of operations which spread themselves


over more than one Department. Consequently, to enable the Committee to carry out their task in the best possible manner they have decided, after appointing at the beginning of this Session a special subcommittee to go into the matter very carefully, to set up sub-committees which will cover these various operations. For example, we have set up a Production Sub-Committee which will cover production of all kinds, that is to say, production not only of guns for the Army but production of ships and everything else. In the same manner, there is a sub-committee on Works which will be concerned not only with the works of any one Department but with works of all kinds. In that way, one hopes we shall have Members who, from the knowledge and experience they get from one Department, will be the better able to inquire into the operations of another Department carrying on very similar work.
The only other matter of any importance is that the Committee, to enable its work to be carried out in the way I have described, has set up an enlarged Co-ordinating Committee. The Co-ordinating Committee has been set up in two different Sessions of Parliament, and the House gave it a special right to make direct representations to the War Cabinet. In the past, that Co-ordinating Committee consisted of the chairmen of the various sub-committees, but for the reasons set out in paragraph 5 of the Report we have thought it better that it should have larger directing powers, always, of course, as will be seen from the Report, subject to approval by the full Committee within 21 days, or, rather, powers which will not be operative, if not confirmed within 21 days. These powers are to be exercised by a larger body, and therefore we have attached to that Co-ordinating Committee five members of the full Committee who will sit upon it and who are not chairmen of the other sub-committees. Those five members will be ex-officio members of all the sub-committees. They can visit any sub-committee they like and keep the Co-ordinating Committee in touch with what is going on in each sub-committee. That will be a great advantage.
In the past one of the difficulties has been fiat there has been a tremendous amount of work for the members of each sub-committee. Naturally, and very rightly, they have become greatly in-

terested in the special work of their own sub-committee. When they come to consider the draft reports from the sub-committees which are put before them as members of the full Committee they often find themselves in the difficulty that, having been so busily occupied with their own sub-committees, they have not been able to follow exactly what has been happening in the other sub-committees. They have to get explanations and they have, perhaps, to accept the views of their fellow members more conclusively and with less examination than would have been the case if they had been able to follow the work of those sub-committees. It is with the object of helping Members who are busily engaged with the work of one sub-committee to know something about the work which is going on in other subcommittees that these extra Members have been attached.
The only other matter which I need mention is a technical one connected with the question of the quorum. The quorum in the last two Sessions, as set down by Orders of the House, has been two. It appeared to some of us that, as a result of recent Debates in the House, there seemed to be a feeling, though perhaps not very strongly expressed, that there ought to be a larger quorum. On that account, when the Orders of Reference were set out on the paper in November of last year for the setting up of the Committee for the present Session, it was suggested that the quorum should be raised to one-third of the number of Members on the sub-committee. It will be clear that that would be all right if there were no additional Members. When we attached additional Members we got a situation which made it impossible to carry out the wishes of the House in a practical manner. I think this matter is set out clearly in paragraph 7 of the Report, which states that the quorum will remain at one-third, but will not include the additional Members, who will neither form the quorum nor count as part of the quorum. The situation, therefore, is that the quorum of the specified Members still remains at one-third. They still have to be there, but the additional Members will not count for the purpose of the quorum.
There is only one other small point, a branch of the same subject. It is that when two committees sit together, as occasionally happens, it is desirable that


the quorum should be one-third of the total number of Members. Sometimes Members serve on two committees, and it might well be that when two committees meet together the total membership, on paper, would be much larger than the actual membership. One name might appear twice, for two different committees. In that case we suggest, the quorum should be one-third of the total, excluding again the additional Members. It is not very easy to make these matters clear in a speech. We have tried to make them as clear as possible in this Special Report, and the Committee feel that there is no division about these matters. These changes are desirable to enable the Committee to do the best work possible for the House, and I hope the House, as a whole, will believe that the Committee are the best judges of the best way to arrange the work. The House has shown satisfaction with the work that the Committee have done, and I hope it will now give them power—if "power" be the right word—to make the changes in procedure which are indicated in the Motion.

Mr. A. Edwards: In order that we may appreciate the differences which are now suggested, will the hon. Member say whether the House has, at any time, had an opportunity of discussing the Report?

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: The House has had ample opportunity, as far as I am aware, but perhaps has not taken advantage of it. Speaking from memory, I do not know that the House has ever exercised its power to discuss the Reports of the Committee in full. Of course, there have been many Questions on the subjects raised in Reports.

Sir P. Harris: I beg to second the Motion.
I do so as an old member of the Committee who served upon it for the first two years. Unfortunately, owing to the call of other duties, I am now deprived of the advantage of membership. I entirely endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said. To be effective, a Committee like this must adapt itself to the changing conditions of war. As the war has gone on, Government duties have spread over larger and larger spheres and if the Select Committee—which, incidentally, has the confidence of the House in a re-

markable way—is to go on doing its job, it should have the opportunity, at any rate for the present, of exploring the ramifications of Government in a cross-sectional way. That is to say, the Departments should be grouped and such problems as labour and production, which affect half a dozen Departments at once, should be explored as a whole.
May I now say a word in favour of a Co-ordination Committee? The House never liked the word "co-ordination," and no word has been more discredited in recent years. But the House need have no suspicion of the Co-ordination Committee. This Committee has been doing its proper work, and has really been co-ordinating. Its purpose, when I was a member—and I understand it has expanded in that direction—is to prevent waste of effort and overlapping, and to see that the whole business of Government is viewed as a whole instead of from a narrow point of view. In fact, I am not quite sure that it is not doing something that the Government might very well study with profit. There has been a suspicion for some time that some kind of co-ordinating committee is badly wanted in the Government. This Select Committee, not for the first time, is going to show the Government how things should be properly done.
There is, however, one word of warning I should like to give. I hope, in taking this wider view of the problems of Government from the point of view of expenditure, that it will not divorce itself from direct contact with Departments. My experience when I was with the Committee was that one of the greatest gains to Parliament from its operations was that Members for the first time were getting right into the Departments and making contact with officials, getting to know the working of the machine from inside, and that I venture to suggest is not only an education to Members of Parliament but also presents opportunities of assistance to Ministers which might well make a precedent for our post-war problems. I was a member of a similar committee in the last war, and we all wanted its work to go on after the war. Unfortunately, it was allowed to lapse and its machinery was stopped, its work being handed over to different organisations, and I believe Government suffered accordingly. I am most anxious that the valuable experience of this Committee, gained under the wise


leadership of my hon. Friend, should be continued, not only during the war, but in our post-war Government. We have just had a Debate on another aspect of Government, perhaps a more controversial one, and it may prove rather fortunate that the two problems should have been considered on the same day. I strongly support the giving of these powers to the Committee, but, at the same time, I hope my hon. Friend will guide the work of the Committee back to the more humdrum but on the whole more efficient way of doing its work through sub-commitees directly in contact with the Departments, so that Members gain valuable experience and learn how the Government machinery works, what its faults are, and how they can be remedied and brought into contact with the changing needs of our expanding activities, not only in war but in peace.

Mr. Garro Jones: The hon. Member who presents this Motion to the House has, I am sure, earned the appreciation of all of us for the devoted work he has done for so long on this Committee, and therefore it would be very ungracious if we were to cavil unreasonably at any new proposals he brings forward for increasing its powers. At the same time, I would like to say that perhaps the Committee concerned is not always the best judge in all cases of how its powers should be exercised. Certainly, the proposals which are now on the Order Paper are new in the procedure of the House, and, in some respects, they are new to any procedure of committee control of which I have ever heard, or of which any other Member has ever heard. Those who have been following the Order Paper attentively may have noticed that during the last few months the hon. Gentleman has, from time to time, put other proposals of a similar character upon the Order Paper but, on second thoughts, those proposals have been withdrawn. The fact that they are second or third thoughts ought not to prejudice us unduly against them, but I would like all hon. Members, if they have the Special Report of the Select Committee before them to note one or two points in connection with it. The first is that it states:
The object of this Special Report is to confirm the authority of the House.
I do not wish to make too much point about the wording of the Report, but at the same time I thought that it was really

the business of the House, and not the Committee, to ask for those powers. I thought that this wording showed, perhaps, a slight lack of propriety.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: I am informed it is the correct wording to get the authority of the House. I do not pretend to be an expert.

Mr. Garro Jones: I cannot quite see that it means what the hon. Member suggests. What do the proposals actually boil down to? They mean that the powers which were given by the House to a Select Committee, representative of all parties, and subject to a long-tried procedure, are now to be delegated by that main Select Committee to a very much smaller committee, not subject to any rules for proportionate membership, and that this new and strengthened sub-committee is to have the power "to review, co-ordinate and direct" the reports of all the investigating sub-committees which come before them. Those words, "to review, co-ordinate and direct" are very strong words. They mean that the sub-committee can revise the reports of sub-committees. They mean that this Co-ordinating Committee, which may or may not have been engaged in detailed investigations with the investigating sub-committees, may nevertheless completely bring to nought, add to or subtract from the investigations of those sub-committees. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent them from conducting parallel inquiries independently of the sub-committee because there is a very strange and new procedure. Paragraph 2 states:
The Co-ordinating Sub-committee so appointed shall have power to send for persons papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; and to adjourn from place to place.
It is proposed to give the Co-ordinating Sub-committee power to send for persons, papers and records. They can conduct investigations, which will set them up as a rival body to the investigating subcommittees. I do not know whether any amendment of these proposals would be in Order. I do not propose to divide against the Motion, but I shall ask the House at a later stage to consider, if possible, an Amendment to the second Motion, to prevent powers being given to the Co-ordinating Sub-committee which have hitherto been given only to the parent Committee, so that we shall not find our-


selves in the position that the Co-ordinating Sub-committee will have nearly all the powers of the parent Committee, special powers of its own, and, in addition, the powers of the investigating subcommittees. I am afraid that if these proposals are carried—as I have no doubt they will be—they will lead the parent Committee to feel that their powers are successfully delegated. There has already been difficulty in getting a quorum of the parent Committee. Its total membership is 32; its quorum is only seven—a very small number—and, even so, it has found considerable difficulty in getting sufficient members on all occasions. If all its powers are delegated to this Co-ordinating Sub-committee, its members will feel that it is not so necessary for them to attend as it was before.
There may be even more serious consequences. It may lead members of the investigating sub-committees, who really do the bulk of the work, into a feeling of discouragement, and even of futility. Their unanimous reports can be revised or blue-pencilled, and the members of those subcommittees can be discharged, by a body which may or may not have taken evidence on the subject-matter of the reports. Paragraph 5 of the Special Report contains an explanation of the new duties. I find nothing in paragraph 5, or in any part of the Special Report, to tell us why it is necessary to empower the Co-ordinating Sub-committee to send for persons, papers and records, to adjourn from place to place, and to sit notwithstanding the adjournment of the House. I have nothing against the last two of those three additional powers, but I am unable to see why the Co-ordinating Sub-committee should have power to set itself up as a parallel body, equally empowered to take evidence, with the parent Committee and the investigating sub-committees. I hope that my hon. Friend will be good enough to say something about that.
I respectfully ask the House to look at Motions 3 and 4, which give power to appoint additional members of all the subcommittees. These will be roving members, if I understand the position aright. There will be five additional members of the Co-ordinating Sub-committee, who will have power to descend upon any investigating sub-committee, in small numbers or in large, up to the total number of five, and to engage actively, if they

so desire, in the work of those investigating sub-committees. They would certainly be in a very powerful position. They are not to be taken into account for the determining of a quorum despite the existing order that a quorum should be not less than one-third of the total membership of committees. I confess that the hon. Member gave a very complete explanation of the reasons why he wanted that change. But mark this. These visiting, roaming members are to have a vote on this subject. Whereas you have four members of the investigating sub-committee who may have sat for months and travelled all over the country in order to arrive at their conclusions, they might find, when they came back to the committee room, that they were visited by five members of the Co-ordinating Sub-committee who could outvote, review and turn down all their recommendations.
I feel that the House ought to take the long view. There is no precedent to give us confidence that a system like this will work. I would ask the Chairman of the Committee certainly to give an assurance on these matters, and particularly in regard to the quorum. As far as I have been able to observe the proceedings of these Committees they are not to be punctilious in the matter of a quorum. There have been difficulties on occasion in obtaining a quorum, and I would ask the hon. Gentleman whether some of these sub-committees, small as are their numbers and their quorum, have ever sat and conducted official business without a quorum being present, or, if they have not, whether he can give an assurance that, as far as his authority goes, he will see to it that they do not sit without a proper quorum being present.
In asking the House to look at Motion No. 5, I find myself in some difficulty. I do not understand it. I tried last night and I tried this morning, but I have been unable to uncover the obscurity of Motion No. 5. The only conclusion to which I can come—and I have read it in the light of the explanation in the Special Report—is that it does not carry out the suggestion contained in paragraph 10 of the Special Report. If it does, I must confess my bewilderment. I will not go into that very complex proposal, but I would ask what the machinery for these general meetings is to be, and who is to take the chair, and how is he to be elected? I


cannot hope to persuade the House to send these proposals back for further consideration, but I do not believe they are wise, or that all this new complexity is necessary or advisable. It will certainly take the procedure of the Select Committee outside the apprehension of most Members of the House.
Having said that, I want to give the House my last and strongest reason why I think, if the House gives these powers, they ought to be brought up again for reconsideration in the light of a short experience. Hitherto, as the Special Report there clearly says, these investigations have been conducted on the foundation of Departmental expenditure. All new investigations are to be conducted in increasing measure on the lines of what is called a horizontal experiment—that is, a thread of common subject runs through many different Departments and they want the investigating Sub-Committees to follow that thread to its end. Well, I am inclined to think—although I have never been in favour of the whispering criticism we hear from time to time that the Select Committee is exceeding its terms of reference—that some of the administrative difficulties in which we now find ourselves are due to the fact that the Select Committee may be taking too expansive a view of its terms of reference. I have read carefully paragraph 3 of the Report and I want the House to look carefully at the last sentence:
There are, it will be understood, certain broad heads of expenditure which are common to several Departments and which are described therein as horizontal subjects for examination. As examples of such the economic use of labour and the construction of new works may be cited.
That means the economic use of labour is to be a subject coming within the terms of reference to the Select Committee. But the economic use of capital equally can come within those terms. I am speaking only from the organisation point of view. In fact, the whole administration of industry can come within the terms of the Committee's reference. They can take up the question, "Is our industry so organised as to produce the economical results which we desire?" There is no limit whatever, because even the Government have said on this important point that the effective prosecution of the war is to be the sole criterion of whether the industry should be nationalised or not, so

it is conceivable that even the Select Committee might find themselves with that bone of contention.

Sir P. Harris: Why not?

Mr. Garro Jones: I will come to that in a minute. It is said that these proposals give greater fluidity to the organisation. What does that mean? Organisation is already very fluid. Its investigations flow into innumerable channels in ever smaller streams, and I think that in the area now being covered with such small organisation, the flow of inquiry looks like losing itself in the desert. That is the answer to my right hon. Friend. If I dislike the expansion of the powers of the Select Committee, it is not because I have any fear of them criticising the Government unduly, but I must confess that I am rather astonished that the Government have allowed this expansion of the Committee's powers. They will lead to broader inquiries and inquiries will not, in future, be related to Departments. I much prefer that inquiries should be related to Departments. That enables the House in Debate to focus more effectively on their reports than if they have to conduct these large horizontal abstract inquiries.
The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne) interrupted to ask when the Reports of these Select Committees had been properly considered by the House. We know they have done an enormous amount of valuable work—work out of all proportion to the time which the House has found for the consideration of their Reports and out of all proportion to the weight which these Reports are receiving in Government Departments. The fruit has not been proportionate to the toil. I believe that if these proposals are carried out, the difficulty will not be lessened, but exacerbated. I consider that the Select Committee is already a piece of clogged machinery—active machinery, capable machinery, but entangling itself into too broad inquiries with an inadequate machine to organise them. In my view, the hon. Gentleman and his Committee would do a better service to themselves and the public purse if they confined their inquiries to the inspection of Departmental waste, which has been the traditional and effective task of the Select Committee on National Expenditure.

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps, as one who, for the past two years and more, has had the honour of sitting under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne) on the Select Committee, the House will allow me to say a few words in reply to the speech of the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones). The hon. Member examined very closely the Report and the recommendations. He called special attention, for instance, in the action of the Select Committee in seeking power from the House to permit the new Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to send for persons, papers and records, to adjourn from place to place, and so on. I speak subject to correction, but my strong impression is that the old Co-ordinating Sub-Committee, which has existed in the last two Sessions, possessed those powers, given to it by the House, and therefore the House would be under a misapprehension if it supposed that in that respect any change was proposed.

Mr. Garro Jones: It is not in accordance with my recollection that the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee ever had powers to send for persons, papers, and records, at any rate until the last few months, when these new proposals were already being considered.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: The hon. Member is mistaken. The Co-ordinating Sub-Committee has always had these powers. What is probably in his mind is that the Sub-Committee has not used these powers because, if it confined itself entirely to the work of co-ordinating, it would not require them. There was always the possibility, and ocasionally the use, of these powers in making the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee part of the investigating section of the work.

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Member for North Aberdeen raised an interesting point when he suggested that the machinery of the Select Committee was already clogged, and that in attempting to extend the inquiries in a horizontal manner, it would only overload the machine still further. There are two points I would like to make in that connection. First, although I was not one of those who outstandingly advocated this change to a horizontal organisation, I had, from my previous experience as a member of the Sub-Committee over which the

right hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) ably presided in the last two Sessions, reached the conclusion, as I think he had, too, that there was important work for a horizontal Sub-Committee to do in dealing with such matters as the building programmes of the various Service Departments, all engaged to a large extent on much the same kind of work, with much the same kind of purpose, but work which could not be adequately and effectively brought under review by three separate Sub-Committees, each dealing with only one of the Services. I give that as a particular instance, but I think a powerful instance, of the work which is waiting to be undertaken by a horizontal inquiry. Secondly, if the hon. Member suggests that the machinery is clogged, he may be right to this extent, that the Select Committee does not consist of 75 Members as he stated, but of only 32, and most of those 32 Members are feeling somewhat overworked. But these recommendations, it appears to me, have been brought before the House in order to lubricate the machine—

Mr. Garro Jones: When I said 75, I did not mean 75, but 35. Therefore, my error was not more than two or three.

Mr. Brooke: It is my considered view now that this experiment—I am sure the hon. Member was quite right in his suggestion that the whole matter should be looked upon by the House as experimental—is worth making, and, if it does not bear fruit, then I think there is little doubt that the majority of Members on the Select Committee will vote for its abandonment. So far as I am aware, that is the way in which every Member of the Committee approached the subject, and there has been no feeling among its Members that something which is in any way unpleasant is being forced upon them. I understand, if these proposals are accepted by the House, that I have been nominated as one of those five suspicious characters to serve as additional Members of the Co-ordinating Committee. Frankly, I do not think that the majority of Members of the Select Committee would have agreed to bring forward these new proposals had they felt they were exposing their selves, in their Sub-Committee inquiries, to five individuals, such as myself, who, in the words of the hon. Member, would descend on any Investigating Sub-Committee and


possibly out-vote it. The chance of outvoting I should have thought was negligible. I should like to put it on record—and in this I think I am speaking for the other four Members—that I shall regard my duty as in no way that of interfering with Members of the Investigating Sub-Committees who may have had a better opportunity than I to take evidence all round the country and to study the subjects in detail. More than one of the Members, already elected chairmen of the Investigating Sub-Committees, has definitely asked me to take an interest in the work of his Sub-Committee when it comes to deal with this or that subject on which he thinks I may be able to give assistance. I am sure that every one of the other four Members has been so approached. Therefore I hope that the hon. Member will not press his point in suggesting that any power of the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to "review, co-ordinate, and direct" the work of the Investigating Sub-Committees will be abused.
Finally, the House will keep in mind that these proposals come forward to-day with the unanimous support of all Members of the Select Committee. So far as I know, there has been no division on that. Certainly there has been no sign of division on party lines. The hon. Member is absolutely right in insisting that the House and not the Committee should be the final judge of the way in which this work is carried on. These are proposals unanimously presented to the House to facilitate the furtherance of the work of the Select Committee. I hope that hon. Members will be convinced that they are put before them in good faith, and that when they have heard, as no doubt they will, detailed replies from the chairman of the Committee on some of the other points that have been raised they will give their approval.

Mr. A. Edwards: I should like to say a word or two on this interesting experiment of the Select Committee. I worked for two years on the Committee, and it was for a long time almost a full-time job. I do not think there has been a single occasion on which the House has shown sufficient interest to devote a day to discussing its work, therefore I could not see my way to continue on a Committee which got so little response from the House and practically

none from the Departments. I can recall no action taken by any Department as the result of the Committee's Reports. We never got a reply in less than four months. If the Committee is to continue its very important investigations, which no Government Department could take on, and it is going to be four months before a Department even acknowledges it, what kind of committee is that in time of war? When I had to consider economy in the Departments I could not separate that from efficiency. You cannot separate efficiency and economy. Some of the fears expressed on this question are entirely covered by the last words in Section 1 of the Report, that any action must be subject to confirmation by the main Committee and the main Committee's Report must be confirmed by the House.
I want to ask the House to take some notice of these Reports and discuss them, and see that the Departments take some action. It is a very serious matter that no action worth talking of is being taken in any direction. There have been 46 Reports and one or two special ones, and not one has been discussed in the middle of the war, when we are spending £12,000,000 a day and the sole purpose of the Committee is to economise. I have given notice of a Motion asking for a discussion of the 25th Report, where the Government defend themselves and the Departments, and I would commend to hon. Members a careful consideration of that Report to see just what the Government profess to have done in response to the Committee's various Reports. After that I think they will find that the most important thing now is not just how the Committee is to do the work but what the House is going to do about it when it has done its work. I discussed the new method before I left the Committee. I was frequently asked to visit various committees. If I had knowledge of a subject, I was invited to help in the investigations. That has been the spirit of the Committee. There is no danger that anyone is going to use any undue influence. We frequently found ourselves making investigations which crossed right through the work of other Departments and committees. This idea of a Special Investigating Committee to deal with these horizontal investigations will be a great time-saver and of great assistance to the Committee, and I commend it to the House.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: With the leave of the House, perhaps I may answer one or two of the questions which my hon. Friend the Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) put to me. Some of them have been ably answered by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Brooke). May I say a word about the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris), whose loss through pressure of work in other directions the Committee deplores very much indeed? He spoke of the desirability of the Committee going back to the departmental system in course of time. I would emphasise that that is probably what will happen. The procedure of dealing on a horizontal basis with certain parts of our inquiries is definitely an experiment. We believe that it is necessary owing to the changed conditions of the war and that it will give the best results of our work to the House now, but it is quite likely that in time we shall return to the more ordinary procedure of a committee of this kind. My hon. Friend the Member for North Aberdeen spoke about the power delegated to the Co-ordinating Committee. In reality there are very few powers at all. The setting-up of the Co-ordinating Committee in previous Sessions came under the ordinary powers. The Committee set up other sub-committees, and there is very little that the Co-ordinating Committee is doing now in the sense of new work except that we are asking that Committee to make such necessary changes as there may be in the personnel of the sub-committees without always waiting for a meeting of the full Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for East Middlesbrough (Mr. A. Edwards), whom we also regret to have lost from the Committee, for he did very valuable work upon it, has explained that everything done by the Co-ordinating Committee in this sense must be confirmed by the whole Committee within 21 days. The whole point in the question of changing personnel is that of saving time.
The power of sending for persons, papers and so on exists now as it always existed. Every sub-committee in the last two years has had it, and there is nothing new in the Co-ordinating Committee having the power.

Mr. Garro Jones: Why is it necessary, then, to ask for these powers, if they already exist?

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: One of the most difficult things I have found in the last few weeks is to get these matters put upon the Order Paper in proper Parliamentary wording. I am informed that it was necessary to put it in that way. I would draw by hon. Friend's attention to the orders of reference as far back as 1940, when the House said that the sub-committees should have the power to send for persons and papers. The power has always existed. He asked me a much more definite question, which I can answer, about the difficulties of the full Committee in getting a quorum. In two and a quarter years I have never known of any case when there was any difficulty in getting a quorum for the full Committee, and I do not think he need worry about that point. The Committee may on occasions have had to wait a few minutes for a quorum, but that, of course, occurs everywhere.
In connection with the sub-committees, there has been, on the whole, little difficulty in getting a quorum. Occasionally there have been difficulties when, say, a sub-committee has met out of London to take part in investigations somewhere in the country. To begin with, not all the members of the sub-committee, perhaps only two or three or four at most, have gone, and then there has sometimes been a difficulty. Next he asked me the difficult question of whether a sub-committee had ever met without a quorum. My answer must be, as he would be the first to appreciate, that no sub-committee as such has ever sat without a quorum. I want to be perfectly frank, and I say that on occasions, though they have been very few, when a sub-committee has been busy and sitting in some distant part of the country, it may have been the case that through the illness or the absence from some other cause of other members of that sub-committee, the chairman may have sat alone; but in such a case he has not sat as the sub-committee and his evidence has not been taken as such for that reason. He has made such inquiries as he could and has reported to us.
Then the hon. Member spoke about the five new members. My hon. Friend behind has dealt with the point, but I do want to assure the hon. Member that there is not the slightest idea in the mind of


any member of the Committee, and certainly not in mine, that these five additional members should ever descend upon a sub-committee and out-vote them. On the contrary, it is our hope that the five additional members will take different branches of work and devote themselves mainly to their particular subjects, but at the same time be able to visit the other sub-committees and so help us to co-ordinate the work. They, of course, have a vote, but so has every member of the Committee. In fact, I think I am right in saying that no chairman of a sub-committee would have the power to exclude any other member of the Committee who chose to be present from voting, and we do not expect any difficulty on that score. Then the hon. Member asked me who would take the chair at joint meetings. As a matter of fact, that point has always been arranged between the chairmen themselves.
He spoke, also, about "the economic use of labour" which is referred to in paragraph 2 of the special report as enlarging the scope of the Committee's work. It may be, again, that my wording is not very good, but that is not what was intended. That phrase was put in only to give an example of horizontal subjects which require examination. I need not explain to him, but perhaps in view of his remarks he will allow me to explain to the House, that that refers to Government work. We are concerned only with Government war expenditure. We are not concerned with the economic use of labour in private industry, any more than with the use of capital.

Mr. Garro Jones: But it does, I take it, include investigation into the labour employed upon Government contracts.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: Yes, anything that the Government are paying for, if it is war work. I should like to say, in conclusion, that I do not dissent in any way from what my hon. Friend the Member for East Middlesbrough said regarding the desirability of the House in its wisdom giving perhaps a little more time to the examination of some of the Reports of the Select Committee. Naturally, I am in entire agreement with him on that point, but it is not a matter for me, but solely a matter for the House. I do not altogether agree with him when he said that he did not think that these

Reports had had any effect upon the Departments. I should think that is hardly the case, because, as he must be well aware, the most valuable part of the Select Committee's work must be done across the table. A good many of the things which the Committee investigate—a certain number, at any rate—are put right before they come before the House of Commons at all.

Mr. A. Edwards: Just to keep correct, I would say this: What I intended to say was that I could not recall any important action having been taken by any Department. That is just a little bit different.

Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne: I certainly shall not cross swords with the hon. Member about the matter. The more he can press that point of view the more in accord I am inclined to be. I do not admit for a moment, however, that the work of the Committee has had no effect upon Government Departments, because that is not the case. It is difficult to explain to hon. Members who do not serve on the Committee the full extent of the proposals. It is not intended to demand from the House any wider powers of reference of any kind. From our point of view, these are merely matters of procedure for the better carrying-out of the work which the House has entrusted to us.

Question,
That the Select Committee on National Expenditure have power to appoint a Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to review, co-ordinate and direct the work of the investigating Sub-Committees, and to refer to such Sub-Committee any of the matters referred to the Committee.
put and agreed to.

Ordered,
That the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee so appointed shall have power to send for persons, papers and records; to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House; and to adjourn from place to place; and shall report any evidence taken by them to the Committee.

Ordered,
That the Committee have power to give such Co-ordinating Sub-Committee power to alter the order of reference of any Sub-Committee, to appoint such further Sub-Committees as may seem to them desirable and to refer to such Sub-Committees any of the matters referred to the Committee, to nominate Members of the Committee for service on any Sub-Committee, to appoint the Chairman of any Sub-Committee, to discharge the members of any Sub-Committee and to


appoint others in substitution for those discharged: Provided that any action taken by the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee in the exercise of any of the powers referred to in this Order shall be invalid unless approved by the Committee within twenty-one days.

Ordered,
That where the Committee have nominated any Members of the Co-ordinating Sub-Committee to serve also as additional Members of all other Sub-Committees, the number of such additional Members shall not be taken into account for the purpose of determining the quorum of any Sub-Committee, nor shall any such additional Members be counted for the purpose of establishing the presence of a quorum at any meeting of a Sub-Committee.

Ordered,
That when two Sub-Committees sit jointly they shall constitute a single Sub-Committee whose quorum shall be one-third (any fraction counting as a whole number) of the total number of persons (exclusive of additional members) who are either Members of both Sub-Committees or Members of one or other Sub-Committee only."—[Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne.]

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932.

Resolved,
That the Orders made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, extending Section 1 of the Act to:

(1) the Borough of Clitheroe, and
(2) the Rural District of Hailsham

copies of which were presented to this House on 3rd February, be approved.

WAR-TIME NURSERIES.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Major Dugdale.]

Mr. Kenneth Lindsay: At the outset I must apologise to my right hon. Friend for not being in my place yesterday when there was an opportunity for a somewhat more lengthy discussion on this important subject. I am most grateful to him for coming here to-day and to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. I want to give my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health an opportunity to make a statement which, in the interests of accuracy and of this whole problem, I believe should be made to the country. I have to bring my remarks into the narrowest possible time, and therefore I must cut out a great many things I had wished to stress.
This story really goes back two and a half years, and may I say to my right hon. Friend that I had no responsibility directly or indirectly for the policy over the last year and three-quarters. There has been a change in policy to which I should have been opposed had I been in office, whether I had been able to make any difference to it or not. Originally, the problem was to find relief for foster mothers in the reception areas after the first evacuation, and there were various circulars. The most notable one was that of 9th January, 1940, the last circular on this subject where the Board of Education appeared on top of the Ministry of Health on this question. But I do not approach this in a narrow or Departmental way. If I think that certain duties lie more appropriately with one Department, it is founded on a certain amount of experience and is a question of profound principle. If we are to make changes now, I want to be absolutely certain that we are making them on right lines, not only during the war, but if possible for the future. In that circular there are references to His Majesty's inspectors ascertaining the need, inspectors being consulted, that the superintendents should be trained experienced nursery school and infant teachers; they even safeguarded superannuation rights. There must be regular visits of doctors and nurses, also the co-operation of the welfare authorities; finally, the proposals had to be forwarded to the Board of Education for approval.
The whole matter was regarded from the point of view of education. The vital date was 6th June, 1941, when another circular was issued, and there were brought in senior Regional officers, the representative of the Ministry of Health, health visitors, even the Regional control of the Minister of Labour. The reason for this change was partly because the problem itself was beginning to change. It was no longer only a question of children in a reception area. It was now dealing also with the child of the munition worker, and there was a number of rather new problems. For example, in the first instance children between two and five were being considered; now it was the children from birth to five. That brought in the whole machinery of my right hon. Friend's Department, but in the process, and also because evacuation and billeting are in the hands of the Ministry of Health, as it were by a side-


wind, a great many purely educational problems have got under the control of the Ministry of Health, and it is that to which I must take the strongest exception. I could go into that circular in greater detail, but I think there were a great many mistakes made. All the way through there was constant reference, for instance, to nursery training colleges but no reference to Board of Education training colleges, to which authorities were asked to apply. People used to ask me whom they should ring up. At least six different panels were mentioned. There were the W.V.S., who had a panel, and Toddington Manor, the headquarters of the National Union of Teachers, and three or four other places.
My right hon. Friend has now issued a third circular, which is far and away the most important of all. It came out on 5th December. I welcome certain things in this circular, and wish they had been done before—for instance, the 100 per cent. grant for nursery classes. This was a matter which was being dealt with very largely through the Ministery of Health, and, to some extent, the Ministry of Labour. They could give grants, and the Ministry of Labour proceeded with great ease to give 100 per cent. grants, whereas the Board in the past had always given 50 per cent. It is time that children, whether they are in evacuation areas or being billeted, whether it is a question of foster-mothers, of nursery centres or hostels for difficult children, were brought under one single control. I could stand here for some minutes and describe the absurdities that have resulted from dual control. I went last week to see what I thought was a hut for a nursery. It was not that, but a hut which was being built by a firm for children over five. I said, "Is there not some provision for children under five?" They said that they thought there was, but that it was to be done by another authority. There were two different sets of people building huts within 50 yards of each other, for children under five in one case, and for children over five in the other.
I could give examples from all over the country of that sort of thing. In one place, when the original Board of Education circular referred to was issued His Majesty's inspector gave instructions to proceed, and within 10 days sanction was given by the town council. My right hon.

Friend will know the place to which I refer. But after the fatal circular of June, 1941, an application was sent in July, 1941, and the date on which sanction was received was 28th October, 1941, a delay of three months. The sanction was cancelled in December, and it was learned that the head office was not satisfied with this particular "Giproc" hut. I have been in this nursery school more than once. It has been there nine months, it has existed through sun and snow, it has resisted the extremities of weather, and it costs something like half the price—I have the exact figures here—mentioned by my right hon. Friend the other day in answer to a Question. I know that he will talk about steel being required, but substitutes have been found, and there was no reason why they should not have proceeded with that excellent experiment months ago. The circular says that the huts will be ready in 14 days. I could tell of places which have been waiting for huts for months. The people concerned are industrial firms, whose names I am prepared to give, and also local authorities. It is not in any way wickedness on the part of my right hon. Friend, but this dual, or even treble, control, which causes these delays. In another place, in which I am particularly interested, three of these centres were set up under the original Board of Education circular. Since the new circular came out, the work has been handed over to a new authority, the voluntary workers have all faded away. They have lost heart. There have been quarrels between matrons and between the teachers, and in two cases there have been resignations.
Take Manchester, which the right hon. Gentleman has been visiting recently, and we find there that the increase in attendance at nursery classes since the original circular has been from 5,252 to 7,159 by simply using the method that is waiting there to be used. This was achieved before the 100 per cent. grant, and it will no doubt be done faster now. But they decided, in spite of the circulars of the Ministry of Health, to go ahead. My figures show that in Manchester, with all the nursery centres which are to be put down in February and March, and looking forward to the next four or five months, only 316 children will be covered by this method, compared with at least 2,000 in the nursery classes. You may well say, "Good luck to them both; they are each


doing their own job, and why get worried about it?" This question should have been put in the hands of the education authority and left there, strengthened by 100 per cent. grant from the Board of Education. There is no reason why, at any rate last July, you could not have said, "You can open early in the morning for breakfast and keep open for late tea." That would be an extension of the education system which would have been normal and which many directors of education would have welcomed all over the country.
When we come to the last circular, I must ask my right hon. Friend whether he will make one or two changes. I do not approve of the machinery, and I know that my right hon. Friend can say that we are working towards some joint body, and that, after all, there are the health and the educational sides. I agree. I want to work for some joint authority, but I am very doubtful whether the control which is going more and more into the hands of the Ministry of Health is the right thing for the children themselves. You have a very distinguished Civil servant in charge of the joint machinery and two or three members from the Board of Education, and you have a contact committee, again, with a Civil servant in charge—all housed in the Ministry of Health. I would say nothing against Civil servants; they do a most remarkable; work when they are given a clear-cut policy, but it is not the job of Civil servants to devise the whole policy and to act in this way. That is why a number of us have come to the conclusion that there should be a junior Minister in charge of this whole question. There are nearly 3,000,000 children under five in this country, and the problems which are besetting them are serious and affect three or four different Departments. I am not satisfied with the regional machinery which my right hon. Friend has set up. I am not tied to regional machinery for the sake of regional machinery. I would ask him, point blank, what is the position of the new regional organisers or supervisers whom he is appointing in different parts of the country? What will their relations be to the senior regional officer of his own Department? I believe that time after time the regional officer in this connection has been the fifth wheel of the mach. If you take a county like

Hertfordshire, where practically the whole question is under the control of the local education authority, you have a very much more effective machine.
I pay due credit to the right hon. Gentleman and the President of the Board of Education for going to Birmingham and Manchester together, but is it really the best use of time for two Cabinet Ministers to tour the country in this way? My time, is up, but I want to ask the Minister whether he will answer some of these questions and explain why to-day there are only 20 nurseries in London, some 24 in Scotland—which I cannot go into to-day—and only 223 in England. Is this really the result of all this elaborate machinery at the centres and in the regions? Is this the best way to do the job? Is this the result of really careful planning at the centre, or is it not rather a jump from step to step, usually at the prodding of various outside bodies? I believe that we should work, however difficult it may be now, towards a single joint authority for all children under five and over five, and I think the major responsibility should lie with those who are responsible for the whole growth of children and not for one particular aspect of children—their health.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Ernest Brown): The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) really falls into the error of over-simplifying the problem. There is no question here of any difference between the President of the Board of Education or myself, or the Minister of Labour and myself. We are working together, each of us has his own function, and we all mean to do two things—first, to increase effective child care and. secondly, to have regard to the immense problems which have came upon the Supply Departments and the Minister of Labour by the increasing demand for married women to take their part in the industrial war effort. If the hon. Gentleman will think again about these principles, he will see that the wisest men have been asking for yeas for the closer working together, centrally and locally, of those who have functions especially concerned with the education of children on the one hand and with their health on the other. That is what we are achieving.
I do not intend to go back two years. I have been in my present Ministry during this last year, and the hon.


Gentleman will agree that the problem has changed, not merely in the way in which he has indicated, but in many other ways. If anybody had suggested to the local authorities in London this time last year that there should be a big expansion of war-time nurseries in London, the discussions would have proceeded on a very different basis from what they have been proceeding on during this last half-year. It is not only that you are now dealing with mothers in reception areas who are concerned with nursery centres for their children from the point of view of welfare, but there has also been an urge for wartime nurseries in evacuation as well as reception areas where mothers, who were able to go into factories, could not do so because certain of the arrangements for the care of their children had ceased in the first phase of the war.

I wish I had time to make a more comprehensive statement—

Mr. Cove: And controversial?

Mr. Brown: Well, controversy if it is wholesome, is always good. Nobody welcomes more than my colleagues and my, self the fact that public attention is being given to this subject, because in our view, second only to fighting, working and winning the war is the care of children.

Mr. Cove: That is not the issue.

Mr. Brown: We have been meeting the needs. When I said the hon. Gentleman opposite had over-simplified the problem I meant that he talks always as though the education authority alone had the responsibility for children. That is not so. For instance, in the case of Lancashire, which he mentioned, even where the broadest conception of nursery classes is taken, as it is in Lancashire, and admirable work done—even where the age of admission to nursery classes is lowered below normal—there are still in the families of war workers children who are below that age. The Government have to provide, in the case of those women who, either because they want to help in the war effort or for economic reasons, wish to go to work, facilities not merely for the children who are in the normal way handled in the schools, but the children who do not go to school. There is, therefore, a multiple function. What has been

arranged—with the agreement of all the Ministers concerned—is, first, the setting up of effective machinery at the centre for constant co-operation, and secondly—and let me say I was surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman's remarks on the subject of regional organisation, for in other spheres he has been pressing us to devolve these things to the regions—the devolvement of responsibility to the regions. We have arranged for co-operation on the regional level between the Education, Health and Labour Departments, and, as the hon. Member will understand, the authority in most cases is the corporation concerned, which has the final say as to which particular committee shall handle the problem from its own point of view.
The hon. Member talked about progress on war nurseries, and I want to say a word or two about that, though the hon. Member will understand that they are only one of the many forms of provision by which we are meeting the needs, Very considerable progress has been made, not merely with wartime nurseries, but also with nursery classes. I will give the House the latest figures, which will show how sharp has been the rise in the last few months. There are three problems—accommodation, staff and equipment. The problems remaining to be solved are nearly all of them problems of labour and materials. It is one thing to project a nursery and another thing to establish it and equip it with all the necessary labour, materials, and equipment. These are the facts with regard to wartime nurseries—not residential nurseries, of which there are 360 in the reception areas, all of them having children under five years in them. The number of wartime nurseries put into operation in October was 9, in November 22, in December 29 and in January 53. The House will see that there has been a rising curve.

Sir Percy Harris: It is a small rise.

Mr. Brown: There is much more to be said than that, if only there were time. With regard to the numbers approved, in October we approved 57, in November 125, in December 133, and in January 114, a total of 429 in four months. New proposals were reported to us by the local authorities to the number of 48 in October, 162 in November, 136 in December, and 104 in January, a total of 450. There-


fore, at the end of January, there were 276 wartime nurseries in operation, 374 more approved, 257 more projected, making a total of 907 compared with 457 at the end of September. If I were asked to make a forecast, I should say that we shall have a further 100 in operation during the month of February, and probably 150 in March. There is no reserve in our attitude to their provision; we shall provide as many as are needed now and as many as are estimated by the Ministry of Labour to be needed now for future requirements.

Mr. Cove: How many children are involved?

Mr. Brown: The hon. Member will see that when we project nurseries for 40

places, we reckon that at least 50 children will be accommodated over the 24-hour period. This is on top of a very large expansion in nursery classes, because in the areas reported to us by the Ministry of Labour on behalf of the Supply Departments as having a high demand for women workers, there were, at the end of January, 1,670 nursery classes with 48,587 children in them; 101 of these classes had been started in December and January. By the end of March—

It being the hour appointed for the Adjournment of the House, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.